Bungie Middleware

Since the 360 launched, players have been complaning about the fact that ranked multiplayer games don’t allow groups of friends to stick together. Gears of War and Rainbow 6 Vegas would just dismantle the team as soon as the round ended, and you’d have to start sending out invites to all your friends, and figure out who is hosting etc.

Developers blamed Microsoft, and I think specifically the true skill system, which tracks individual ratings. Microsoft said it could be done, but neither really did anything about it.

Then, of course, Halo 3 comes along and fixes everything. Allows groups to stick together and play ranked matches, and even allows groups to stick together as they move from one gametype to another.

Is there a way that Bungie could license that part of Halo 3 to other developers? Or even better, sell it to Microsoft, who just gives it to other developers? It’s for things like this that we are playing a yearly fee, after all.

After playing Halo 3 online, getting into a match in almost any other 360 game feels like a chore. Loading screens every other second, long waits for matches, searching for matches with a semi-full room that only has a minute or two left on the clock… It sucks.

I don’t see why not. Isn’t this kind of like what Gamespy turned into a stupid amount of cash?

What are the odds of it actually happening, though?

During the past year, I’ve definately questioned why I’m paying so much for a friend’s list and a broken matchmaking system. When I play Halo 3, I have nooooo problem with the charge, even though I’m sure Bungie isn’t getting any of that money.

Wouldn’t it be nice if every XBL game could tell you how many people were online? I think there’s a reason why MS won’t release actual numbers of who’s playing online, and it’s that the pitifully low numbers for 3rd-party games would devalue the service.

The only effort MS makes now to help 3rd party matchmaking is to publish a calendar with “theme nights” in OXM. Whoopee. How about some stats about when’s the best time to find someone online to play Ridge Racer or Prey with?

After CoD4 is released, I hope any shooter without a party system will be considered inferior.

Actually, it was already “fixed” in Halo 2 as it used the Trueskill system as well. Other developers hemming and hawing that it couldn’t be done was obviously false.

Licensing the tech would be great though - maybe now that they’re no longer part of the mothership they can branch off into that kind of stuff.

I really never understood why it wasnt a requirement for live. I actually thought it was before I bought my 360.

Fixed in the old system, sure. But Halo 3’s online system is leaps and bounds better than even Halo 2 was.

Does it have a party system? I’m really looking forward to CoD4, but Halo 3 has ruined me for everything else.

Yeah sure, I never said it wasn’t. I was trying to point out that nothing was ever really broken - TrueSkill has always allowed you to do the party thing, other developers saying it didn’t was false.

I miss clans as a way to extend your Friends list, but I understand the technical reasons the feature is not included.

Oh, right. Although, when developers weren’t building this into their games, Microsoft should have stepped up and done something. This is their system. Either they could have build the tools for the developers, or they could have made it easier, or something. It’s ridiculous that we’re already two years into 360 Live, and this is only happening now.

What I’d really like to see is a retrofit with all the past multiplayer games, especially Gears, GRAW/2, and Rainbow 6.

Aren’t they brining that in soon?

I dont think its ever been announced or implied.

Yeah XBL has been bugging me since I started playing TF2. Why are my options so limited? It’s almost as dumbed down as Wii’s online component. Why can’t I see how many people are playing? Why can’t I look at all the games and decide which one I want to join? Why do I have a friends list when it seems to be completely absent in the game? Why can’t I create a clan and manage it in the game?

Instead of all these nice things I get two options, Quick Match or Custom Match? I just plopped down $60 for what exactly? Granted it’s not as bad for all games, but why is it so dumbed down in general?

Developers blame Microsoft, Microsoft blames developers. It’s ridiculous.

At least Nintendo has some sort of justification for their retarded scheme, however idiotic it may be.

IIRC GameSpy is busy trying to do the same thing for PS3.

Hey, so how does multiplayer work in TF2 360 exactly? Are there parties etc?

What, that they don’t believe that people should play games online?