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Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.
Posted By: Captain Spark	Date: 12/11/03 9:11 a.m.
In Response To: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will. (guy who doesn't post....too often) : **disclaimer** Someone needed to say this. Yes, I have posted this at the GBX : forums. : ******************************************************************* : I am unhappy. : A game that brings me much joy is now bringing me much frustration. : The game I speak of is Halo PC. : We waited and waited for this game. Why? Well for starters, Bungie took 9 : months to ?hand-pick? a company to do the port. This is not necessarily a : fault of anyones. Once the game was started, it took a while to port, but : the time span was within reason. : Upon launch of Halo PC, we all found out several things: 1. The game requires : high-end hardware to run smoothly. Want performance better than smooth? : Too bad, the hardware doesn?t exist yet. Can?t afford or simply can?t : justify the hardware purchase? Suffer through sub-Xbox quality graphics : and frame rates. Why? Gearbox apparently wants to be on ?the cutting : edge?. Great, all your customers are on the dull blade, simmering on the : backburner. Maybe in two years, when video cards and processors exist that : can handle this game?s full capacity, a grand total of 4 years after Halo : debuted on the Xbox, gamers everywhere can finally enjoy the masterpiece : that Gearbox has painted. : 2. Tweaking about two dozen setting on your computer can potentially increase : frame rates. You better know what you?re doing and where to go for this : information. : 3. ATI video cards in particular have huge incompatibility issues with Halo : PC. Any changes in resolution can potentially lead to your computer : restarting after an error screen. Also, simply loading new maps can cause : your PC to reboot. I have personal experience with this. Frustration : doesn?t begin to describe how I felt when my PC rebooted for the 14th time : of the night due to Halo PC. Thank goodness I still had the receipt. : 4. The lag that everyone complained about on the Xbox tunneling software is : almost non-existent compared to that of the PC version of Halo. All of a : sudden, we realized how good we had it. This lag, though, isn?t just the : kind that makes the game ?freeze? for a short time (but that does happen, : frequently), it is a new lag, permanently imbedded into every game. This : new lag makes leading your target by two or three feet the standard. This : leading is even worse when vehicles are the (intended) target. : This is apparently caused by server-authoritative net code, although I don?t : pretend to know the alternatives and ramifications of such alternatives of : that. What I do know, is that it sucks. : 5. Along with the lag came unbearable warping. Vehicle warping, weapon : warping, teleporter warping, rock warping, and spawn warping?the list goes : on. The Beta testers didn?t report any of this? : 6. Team killing hasn?t been addressed by Gearbox and as such, it runs rampant : on every server out there. This drives everybody up the wall. A patch is : promised. : Ok, so the Halo PC community is upset and rightly so. Gearbox promises : action, in the form of a patch. Yay. : We are told the patch will come mid-late November, 03, and it will fix many : issues, specifically team killing and the hopefully improve net code. : The patch release period comes and goes, and three weeks later, it finally : arrives. I woke up excited to install the patch on my Halo Dedicated : Server, which I have because of my extreme love of the game and the : community. : The patch ?fixed? the team killing issues, by allowing server administrators : to set the team kill penalties and thresholds. The problem is, there : should be different settings for different game types. A no-shields game : needs more team kill leniency than a standard match with shields. Gearbox : did not make this flexible. : The patch also added more information to the in-game carnage report. It now : shows assists, deaths, and kills along with the player?s ping. The new : info is great, although I question the validity of the ping since all : pings are multiples of 33. Real pings were too difficult to code? Gearbox : needed to group pings? : The patch supposedly made the net code better, with improved target : prediction, but regardless of whether it actually helped or not, it : brought with it a boat of new problems. : Players are now experiencing crashes due to halo. I personally crash when : loading new maps online. I enter the new map, and I freeze. My health bar : is missing, and I can?t move. My teammates on voice chat, who haven?t : crashed, ask me why I, along with 2 or 3 other people, quit out. I laugh : and say I didn?t and shut halo down by ending the process, since its : frozen stiff. Sometimes, the crashes shut everything down and my PC won?t : respond until I reboot. : Some players can?t even play now, the patch won?t install correctly and : that?s it. No Halo PC for them. Others have varying issues that plague : their online and solo play. The frustration is starting to outweigh the : enjoyment. : We waited so long for this patch, and the explanation given to us was : ?Microsoft is testing it.? Well, I ask this, ?What the hell were they : testing?? The patch is less than satisfactory as far as fixing the issues : that were present since launch. Additionally the patch is bad because it : caused a slew of new problems. : When I first heard about people complaining about crashes, etc., I assumed it : was people jumping on the bandwagon and having a bitch-fest. Once I : experienced these issues myself, I truly saw what was going on. : As an outsider, I think Gearbox should thank their lucky stars that Halo is a : Bungie game with a huge, loyal fan base. If this were any other game, it : would be dead by now, or at least not enjoying the sales at present. : You botched this up guys and girls of Gearbox, and it?s your responsibility : to all your customers, and your fans to make it right. I have faith in : you, not much, but some. Please, please, read what people are saying, get : to work, and fix what is wrong. : Thanks for your time. : Brandon Raffensperger : HBO-Kingpin : Admin HBO-COERCE : gwdpto : Brandon@coerce.net I think I've played on line twice since the new patch was released so I can't really comment except that my weapons, as usual, are shooting blanks and the warping issue is still there. People complain about the high ping all the time, ping times change minute by minute so there is really nothing that can be done about that. I play the single player campaign because I am recording new dialog and using software I developed provided in part by the Open Source Community. The sound bugs I have experienced in the past are mostly gone, I haven't had even one crash and the user interface hasn't gone brain dead like it's done so many times in the past. The only real problem I still have is the low FPS, I think Halo is processing Fluid Dynamics in the background. It's really a shame that Halo PC has turned out as bad as it is. The complaints are rolling in and clogging the Gearbox forums. I have to wonder if Gearbox is listening? I also can't believe for one second that the Quality Control people at Microsoft didn't see the problems that those of us have experienced so far, and yet, it was still released to the public. I'm sure that Bungie/Gearbox and Microsoft wanted Halo to be a state of the art game with dazzling visuals and sound, sadly it hasn't delivered for most of us. The Halo community is fanatical about the game and as much as we all love this game, the community will also rip it to shreads when it doesn't, and hasn't delivered, so far......time will tell I suppose.

Message Index

Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	guy who doesn't post....too often	12/11/03 3:39 a.m.
EXACTLY! *NM*	Ben Roth	12/11/03 4:19 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Dustin aka Bean83	12/11/03 4:27 a.m.
this might help	Ben Roth	12/11/03 4:33 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Petrit	12/11/03 4:30 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Petrit	12/11/03 4:39 a.m.
umm why the ping?	Iceman1330(at school)	12/11/03 11:28 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Viscily II	12/11/03 4:41 a.m.
can't go wrong w/ xbox halo :] *NM*	mc_killa [01ah]	12/11/03 8:07 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	nof	12/11/03 9:05 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	2 Cents	12/11/03 9:28 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	guy who doesn't post....too often	12/11/03 1:51 p.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	halofan141	12/11/03 9:53 p.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	halofan141	12/11/03 9:47 p.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	KP	12/11/03 9:11 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Konrad9	12/11/03 8:49 p.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Louis Wu	12/12/03 4:04 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Konrad9	12/12/03 5:33 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Louis Wu	12/12/03 5:44 a.m.
That's what happens when you pressure the devs. *NM*	halofan141	12/11/03 9:49 p.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Captain Spark	12/11/03 9:11 a.m.
Good Post Brandon! I AGREE 110% *NM*	2 Cents	12/11/03 9:13 a.m.
well said!	Master of SPARTAN's	12/11/03 10:14 a.m.
Bravo, bravo. Well said! *NM* *NM*	Mhaddy	12/11/03 1:22 p.m.
Beautiful, man. *nm* *NM*	Texrat	12/11/03 2:56 p.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Dan Chosich	12/11/03 3:12 p.m.
my comments	Break Point	12/11/03 3:56 p.m.
Re: my comments	Captain Spark	12/11/03 4:58 p.m.
Concurrence	MikeMan445	12/11/03 4:09 p.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	guy who doesn't post....too often	12/11/03 5:37 p.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Louis Wu	12/12/03 4:21 a.m.
hehe...	Louis Wu	12/12/03 4:26 a.m.
Re: hehe...	KP	12/12/03 10:58 a.m.
Re: hehe...	guy who doesn't post....too often	12/12/03 12:56 p.m.
Stop Bitching is what i say...	Spenser	12/11/03 9:58 p.m.
Re: Stop Bitching is what i say...	Brian	12/11/03 10:26 p.m.
Re: Stop Bitching is what i say...	guy who doesn't post....too often	12/11/03 11:27 p.m.
And to think, some say we don't have trolls...	Socrates	12/12/03 2:57 a.m.
Re: And to think, some say we don't have trolls...	Ben Roth	12/12/03 5:13 a.m.
Re: And to think, some say we don't have trolls...	Texrat	12/12/03 11:06 a.m.
you're both right...	Socrates	12/12/03 2:01 p.m.
Grow up is what I say	Texrat	12/12/03 11:03 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Brian	12/11/03 11:09 p.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Louis Wu	12/12/03 4:38 a.m.
I've said it before...	Miguel Chavez	12/12/03 11:15 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Texrat	12/12/03 11:41 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	guy who doesn't post....too often	12/12/03 1:28 a.m.
Re: Halo PC Complaints. Say what you will.	Ducain	12/12/03 9:42 a.m.
Couldn't agree with you more	ViolentlyHappy	12/12/03 4:19 p.m.