A buddy on Steam sent me a message last night:

"Gettin a bit tired of this MW2 P2P stuff, where do I turn on or find the dedicated server option in the config?"

He bought the game without even being aware of this feature removal. Not everyone does the research that the hardcore does, you have to wonder how many people got bitten like this and might not be around for the game's next installment. One can hope anyways.

I don't know how anyone is able to seriously defend this retarded move by IW. Anyone with the tiniest bit of experience in gaming knows that once a game is unleashed on the masses the bugs will start popping up left, right and center. In internal testing you get to see like the tip of the iceberg. Once the game is released you get to see the iceberg in its full glory (or not).
If the game has multiplayer or is centered around multiplayer then it's even more critical to be on guard immediately after the game hits the market.

I'm sure that these guys worked their asses off and that they really deserve a vacation but you got to handle this differently. You don't just "shut down" the whole studio for the month following the game's release. That's just frickin retarded. If you are not frickin retarded then you come up with a different plan where the holidays are split between the team in an intelligent way to ensure an appropriate level of post-launch support. Or if you absolutely have to shut down the studio for a month then you do that maybe in the second or third month after the release of the game after the most obvious and critical flaws have been addressed.
But you don't shut the whole fucking place down in the month following the release. You just don't. Unless you are a complete retard, of course. And I think we have a winner in IW here.

The ironic thing about this is its primarily on the 360.

1.Consoles are easy, safe & Secure!

2.You wont be subjected to any virus or hacks, its a closed system.

3.$50 bucks a year buys you a safe and secure online environment.

Thx but I'll take dedicated servers where the admin can ban this sort garbage without having to wait for a company on vaca to get around to it.
I'll take dedicated servers where i can actually choose my game and map and see my ping and not 1-4 bars cause the dev feels im not intelligent enough to see an actual number.

Thx for the safe and secure gaming experience but color me not impressed at $60 bucks.

I've never played an online FPS where people didn't claim everyone else was hacking. Normally just after they got shot. Some people are just good.

Go look up videos on the javelin and infinite ammo hacks before claiming that it's just people complaining because they're not good players. I ran into javelin hackers constantly just after buying the game and it completely ruined it. I ran into three matches with ammo hacks the other night and have stopped playing until it is fixed. The amazing thing though? This is on the 360! Supposedly the infinite ammo hacks are being done by actually injecting code into hosts. It goes viral and basically, you'll start using the hack involuntarily if you connect to a host that's using it. And once it's done, apparently the only way to stop it is to reboot your 360. I have no idea how this was pulled off but according to friends of mine who are still playing, it's everywhere and has completely ruined the game.

And yeah, since people paid $60 for the game, I think they have a right to be pissed off as IW making excuses. Like it or not, developers work for their customers, not the other way around and customers have every right to be upset when a product they paid for is getting constantly exploited like this. With the budget this title had, hacks that are as trivial to pull off as the javelin one are not acceptable. It might be easier to swallow if IW wasn't constantly coming out with arrogant statements and boneheaded PR moves, essentially telling their customers to sit down and shut up because they know they'll buy the game anyway.

This comment was edited on Dec 18, 2009, 14:21.

As games get more and more complex in code terms, the likliehood of bugs increases exponentially. Have you ever debugged code on multi-million line pieces of software? I doubt it.

Well, not to jump in here, but actually, yeah...I have. On a much smaller team than these guys have, I'm sure. Try it with just a handful of people when your clients will die in a fiery ball of death if you dropped the ball in testing, sometime.

Complexity always leads to bugs. If NASA have problems with space shuttle exploding after using a tried and tested design that they spent billions on, I think its laughable to assume that a PC or console game is going to ship with absolutely zero issues. Especially on PCs where every single shipped piece of hardware is subtely different.
But I'm sure that just arrogance, and you can do a MUCH better job with your ninja game development skills no?

I respect you and your work, cliffski - but what smacks of arrogance is the assumption that nobody who plays these games understands how to write code, or the complex issues involved. The level of disdain for the customer in this industry (PC gaming in particular) has reached a very sad high water mark.

Comparing a game to safety critical systems is silly. You know damn well companies ship games with known bugs - try that with avionics and see what happens.

It's true that you cannot possibly fully test any reasonably complex body of code. But to ship a product fully aware that there will be critical issues and just walk away - that's poor customer support.

Yeah, game developers work hard, and I won't argue that these guys didn't feel like they deserved a break - but there's a software lifecycle that includes supporting a product after launch, and this ain't it.

Anybody who argues that IW didn't just cash in on PC users who were foolish enough to buy this crap because of the title - with absolutely NO intentions of providing anything other than a half-assed port - while at the same time jacking up the price tag, simply because they knew they could...well, if anyone still believes that, they've not been paying attention.

Glad I read the writing on the wall, and dodged this one. Will be a cold day when I buy anything else these guys put out, either.

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

I'm gonna start a petition to get a noticeable difference between 30 and 60 FPS's.

Seems to me the Xbox complaints are a bit overblown.
Yeah, the javelin sucked. They fixed it pretty quickly. I only ran into two people doing it.
Yeah, the infinite crates sucked, but I never saw it.
Yeah, the current STD sucks, but I've put in at least six hours on XBL since it showed up and I've only ended up in one game that it hit (about 60 of us in Rust, sucked.) It was when I tried 3rd person. Any of the more popular gameplay styles are very easy to get into bug-free games.

Again, just one person's anecdotal experience, but I've got two days into XBL and very few issues. They're fairly easy to avoid at this point.



Regardless, they probably just finished 8 months straight of crunching. Let them have their vacation. They're taking care of show-stoppers, they're protecting their baby, and they're relaxing.

I have 4 friends that play this game (guys in my WoW guild) and all I hear from them in vent chat is "oh, more hackers" .. apparently MW2 is riddled with hackers..
GG.. no thanks.

I've never played an online FPS where people didn't claim everyone else was hacking. Normally just after they got shot. Some people are just good.

I have 4 friends that play this game (guys in my WoW guild) and all I hear from them in vent chat is "oh, more hackers" .. apparently MW2 is riddled with hackers..
GG.. no thanks.

Use your stupid fucking brain before you make a dumb post next time.

idiot.

Takes one to know one.

When I worked for EA back in the day, no one got time off for at least a month off after shipping specifically because you knew there were going to be issues to be fixed. This how it should be. Ship, stick around several weeks to fix immediate pressing issues, THEN you take time off.

This blows my mind, there isnt a game that releases these days that doesnt have bugs and in alot of cases, game breaking bugs and issues.

The fact that Activision and IW knew this was going to be the largest selling game this year(of all time)and the entire studio goes on vacation for over a month tells me what utter fucking morons they are and how much these doosh bags care about their online community.

MW2 is a solid and fun game but the nature of its online component is almost like Blizzard releasing WOW then going on vacation for a month and expecting everything to be dandy when they get back.

Are we supposed to feel lucky that some nubs in the company are working on a patch on their own time? How arrogant these assholes are.

I cant find a cage match without being thrown into a 20 man hacked version on the xbox atm, its nigh unplayable.
These dickweeds dont even respond to the community on their own forums.
That 402 guy is just another example of what asshats IW as a whole really are.
..And for the record Robert Bowling(multiplayer lead designer) looks and speaks like typical xbox live dillweed.

I don't see the big deal. Those guys probably worked their asses off the last 2 years putting a few 1000 hours a year into the game. Are you implying they're not entitled to a bit of a holiday after their hard work?

If there had been some major bug (and there wasn't) then they would have called them back in to work and fix it.

Use your stupid fucking brain before you make a dumb post next time.

idiot.

This comment was edited on Dec 18, 2009, 09:56.

As games get more and more complex in code terms, the likliehood of bugs increases exponentially.

Uh, yeah, way to prove the guy's point for him. Having your entire dev team go on vacation right after launch is lunacy. You're going to have bugs, and you are very likely to have critical bugs. That's the time you need a team around to fix them.

I agree, but it doesn't require an entire team to be on base for issues post launch

The best people to fix bugs are those who put them in. You think it works better to get a bunch of junior intern coders to fix multi-threading and graphics issues coded by the lead developers?
People fixing code they don't understand statistically do way more harm than good.

hi we're infinity ward, we are rich and we clearly dont give a fuck! (but some of our staff do).

This blows my mind, there isnt a game that releases these days that doesnt have bugs and in alot of cases, game breaking bugs and issues.

tells me what utter fucking morons they are and how much these doosh bags care about their online community.

How arrogant these assholes are.

As games get more and more complex in code terms, the likliehood of bugs increases exponentially. Have you ever debugged code on multi-million line pieces of software? I doubt it.

Complexity always leads to bugs. If NASA have problems with space shuttle exploding after using a tried and tested design that they spent billions on, I think its laughable to assume that a PC or console game is going to ship with absolutely zero issues. Especially on PCs where every single shipped piece of hardware is subtely different.
But I'm sure that just arrogance, and you can do a MUCH better job with your ninja game development skills no?

Im so glad I didnt buy this game and I really feel for Sempai and the other people who bought MW2 but and this is a big BUT dont tell me you didnt know this was coming??

You know that tiny clue that there was no dedicated server support?

So basically what Im saying is this is going to go on as long as people keep eating the shit that these guys are shoveling their throats...

And the arrogant prick award goes to Sempai.
As it's totally obvious you have no clue what development means or what you're talking about, why not just STFU and grow up.

You sure told me, great argument.

* REMOVED *
This comment was deleted on Dec 18, 2009, 07:52.

quit your crying, there is plenty of other games to play so if you cant stand mw2 for some bug stop playing it play something else and wait for a fix.

Except that -- you know -- he paid sixty bucks to be able to play it, not to wait around for them to fix it.