| Gavin Clayton 2004-11-27, 12:47 am |
| On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 11:26:16 -0500, "Bill" <msgdev@hotmail.com> wrote:
quote:
>Also it is way to focused on ranking. Who cares about ranking it should be
>for fun.
Without a ranking system, a newbie or less-skilled player could
constantly find themselves fighting against very skilled practised
players. It's no fun to lose all the time, against veterans who can
snipe you in the head as soon as you respawn. The ranking system makes
sure you can't play against people much better - or worse - than you.
I think the Optimatch system is innovative and pretty cool, but I also
think there are three big flaws that spoil it:
1) No sense of companionship or teamwork when you're thrown together
with strangers you've never seen before, and 5 minutes later will
never see again. You can't develop good teamwork strategy with
5-minute strangers. With a more traditional "server" system, you'd get
to know those strangers the longer you stay on their server; but Halo
2 optimatch games are so brief and unfriendly.
2) The 3-minute wait in Matchmaking for every match. I don't want to
wait 3 minutes while it finds me some *new* strangers to play against,
when I'd be happier going straight into another round with the
strangers from the last match, and hopefully building some teamwork
with them.
3) You can have the equivalent of a traditional server, of course --
but only with people on your friends list. Do most people who've just
signed up to Xbox Live know *anybody*? And can you ever make
worthwhile friends, when optimatch games are so transitory, and
everyone leaves as soon as the scoreboard comes up?
But apart from that it's okay.
Gavin Clayton
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