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Why does HALO 2 SUCK on Xbox Live?

J

jimbo

Banned
I thought that might get people's attention. I realized something kind of dissapointing. Halo 2's LIVE play is made for people who already have a ton of friends online. I haven't even spend 1/100th of the time I spent playing Cunter Strike on Halo 2 online.

Why you ask?

Here's my situation. I had to re-new my Xbox Live account, gamer tag and all. All my old friends are gone. And my connection was never fast enough to host games. So basically I'm stuck playing one round in Quickmatch, after which I have to find a whole new set of people to play with after each match. It just kicks me back out to the search screen after each match. Frankly I hate that. I spend more time finding rooms online than actually playing. So here's my question. How do I keep playing with the same people over and over again? Is there anyway you can search and find the same people a la Counter Strike? You know where you could see the host, level and the number of players. What am I missing here?

I sincerely would appreciate your help.

P.S. BTW, my old gamer tag was Barret if anyone remembers playing with me, and my new one is GhostOfBarret.
 
There are no servers, so no there's no way to look up servers. Your best bet is to ask for an invite to a party if you see a group of good players that are already in a party. Sometimes, some parties will ask you at random. I've accepted invites from strangers and had some good times.
 
Can you keep playing with that same party? And how do you find it?

Basically what I want is to be able to switch maps after a game is over and keep playing with those same people for like 7-8 rounds.
 
Why not play with people from GAF?

Just by playing matchmaking games, I must have had about 40 invites at least. You could also always ask at the postgame lobby if anyone is in a party and if they can invite you. Or you can create your own party and invite people at the postgame lobby...
 
jimbo said:
Can you keep playing with that same party? And how do you find it?
Click to expand...
You can't really tell if someone's in a party other than them talking directly to each other. You ask "hey you guys in a party" after a round and ask to join. Yeah, it's a roundabout way of doing things, but it's the only way to keep playing with the same people round after round in H2.

I'm not a fan of the whole auto-match up thing, but GAF swears by it :\
It sucks if no one on your friends list plays that game (like my situation).
I hate being bounced from room to room not knowing which map, players, or even game mode I'm going into. "LAND GRAB!? BAH!"
 
Thanks Rorschach. Maybe I can finally actually get a taste of what I've been waiting 3 years to try. Heck it was easier playing Halo 1 online through Gamespy than Halo 2.
 
I have the same problem.

I have a crappy upload on my broadband, and can't host. I don't have any xbox live friends so I can't enjoy Halo 2 multiplayer AT ALL. It wouldn't be all that hard to code some kind of game lobby where you could view all games and pick one to join instead of having to host each time. That's a pain in the ass. :(
 
I would have posted that, but I didn't know that was the only way you could really find people to play with in Halo 2. They really made it a pain in the ass. I'm really not that big on clans.
 
If you think the online in Halo 2 is horrible (which it is.. it's a buggy mess), try playing Mechassault 2. It's worse. You could be waiting up to (I kid you not) 45 minutes to even get into a match.

Why, you may ask? Because the teams MUST be even. Now that's not all that bad of a thing.. if the game had somesort of matchmaking system. Which it doesn't. It needs fixed.
 
bitwise said:
you aren't effective anyways. you sound as dumb as the Megafoo guy who trolls the RE4 threads.
Click to expand...
Luckily for myself, I'm only joking 99% of the time when I troll anything. You, however, seem to enjoy trolling me rather well. And hey, have fun with that.
 
tahrikmili said:
instead of having to host each time
Click to expand...

This is untrue. You never have to host a game in Halo 2, simply because once all game members are chosen, the game itself decides who's the host, based on their connection quality. So no need to worry about your bad connection: the game knows it and if there's people with a better connection, you'll never be chosen as an host.

Still, the problem of playing with all the same people remains, but I really didn't find it an issue: building up a good friends list, expecially if you regularly frequent an online community like GAF, can be done quite fast.
 
Spider_Jerusalem said:
This is untrue. You never have to host a game in Halo 2, simply because once all game members are chosen, the game itself decides who's the host, based on their connection quality. So no need to worry about your bad connection: the game knows it and if there's people with a better connection, you'll never be chosen as an host.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about this? Because whenever I try start looking for a game instead of choosing to join a friend's game the connection suffers badly.. I thought the problem was my crappy upstream bandwidth?
 
tahrikmili said:
Are you sure about this? Because whenever I try start looking for a game instead of choosing to join a friend's game the connection suffers badly.. I thought the problem was my crappy upstream bandwidth?
Click to expand...

That's the way it works and if the hosts quits the game chooses the next best connection.
 
I believe that Halo2:s matchmaking system is the best thing that happened to online gameing since... well.. since ever.. easily the best system on live or any pc platform (the party system owns)

It is NEVER a problem to find a game, same people? I don´t care, I just want to play, and if I have som friends they can come along and we can play strangers. AND you get stats on everything..

I love it, much better than all the other Live-games
 
When you play with people that you had a good time with go into the recent players list and send friend invites. In no time you will have a real big friends list and simply join parties with people you know.
 
SpokkX said:
I believe that Halo2:s matchmaking system is the best thing that happened to online gameing since... well.. since ever.. easily the best system on live or any pc platform (the party system owns)
Click to expand...
You realize that Blizzard did this years before, right?
 
nope, never played blizzard games over internet (battle.net or what they call it)..

kudos to blizzard then.. and bungie for realising it was good an copying it ;)
 
You can send party invites right from the game summary screen, before the player in question leaves. So it's a good idea to verbalize that you'd like this player to join so they don't whisk away from summary immedietly, as I often do. This is the only way to send a party invite without sending a firend request first.

So you see, Halo 2, more than any other Xbox Live game, is meant to increase your friends list, as it has increased mine.
 
Spider_Jerusalem said:
Still, the problem of playing with all the same people remains, but I really didn't find it an issue: building up a good friends list, expecially if you regularly frequent an online community like GAF, can be done quite fast.
Click to expand...
So true. Almost all of my friends list is GAF folk.
 
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