Gears of War update: more talk, less tagging

-thank you.

"Fixed rare situation where host could loop countdown and never start match"

I love GOW but as someone who has hosted at least 400 matches I would tend to disagree with the wording of "rare" on the above statement. So I am definately glad this problem will be fixed. Hell YEAH! (Yes I have hosted that many times, since 95% of the time I play I'm the host, and I play a lot.)

"Added additional cheat detection code"

I swear lately I have been seeing too much cheating going on, i.e players being able to get on top of objects or in areas they should not be in or on.

"Removed host name from Ranked match server browser"

Im actually sad to see this problem being fixed. I would usually host a match and towards the end invite anyone to play with me or against me after the match was over by looking me up when I would start another match.

"Optimized server browser queries to return results more quickly and prevent scroll bars from hiding quality of service icons"

Hell yeah! the long wait for the results was my bigest reason I began to host so much. I usually dont have any problems with people picking me as a host and my matches usually start right away without having to wait a long time to have 8 players

"Increased penalty for quitting a Ranked match to -50 points"

I'm actually upset over this one, I HATE QUITERS! The penalty for quiting should have been increased greatly. In my opinion if someone quits they should loose at least 1000 points. This should decrease the number of people who quit at least for those who care about their ranking.

Well I definately have an opinion on every fix but those are the one I felt I should comment on. One more thing though, the one problem I have come across a lot that I wish would be fixed eventually is geting stuck on ledges where you are trying to get down and are unable to as if a invisible wall was right in front of an area where you should be able to get down with no problem.

SweetHavok- actual gamer tag

I play with a VGA cable at high res on my 4:3 display and haven't noticed any distortion... does it only apply in multiplayer or something?

Also, they need to do something for left-handed players! My friend is left-handed, but after she's swapped the joysticks and triggers left/right she needs to press green while moving the right stick to run, which is almost impossible. Why not allow fully custom mapping so she can swap green and the right bumper round.

so there will be no more glitchers after the patch ???

I can't understand why people complain so much about things. No matter what the companies do, y'all will complain. They have a good game (albeit short) with great multiplayer content, and all that we hear is "waa waa waa". Maybe the ranking system fix is due to people raising their ranks by playing with friends only. I agree that playing with strangers is a little annoying, escpecially when little ten year old timmy (whose parents will later sue MS for such a violent game) yells and screams into the headset. Or the over caffinated teenagers who talk more crap than a sanitation worker, and play cheaply as hell, but they could not fix a thing and move on to GoW 2.

I think the grenade tag fix is awesome, that'll add skill to the game. maybe ridding us of the ten year olds and over caffinated teenagers.

I don't understand this at all... it is now extremely hard to play with your friends since you can't see the host name.. only host. What good logic that is. That is the single most dumbest thing i have ever heard with an update. Excellent job

I’m super pissed about these new updates. I mean come on! EPIC just set a new precedence for my purchasing ANY of their games again.

Host Name – Are you kidding? How do I play with my friends, the 360’s entire sales appeal to me was the better shaped market place. The better website to keep up with your friends list etc. And kicking a$$ at games! Stacked or not where’s the fun now?!

Strict NAT – I call SUPER B.S. on that. I’m currently a Network Engineer for 5yrs going on. This is another way of Billy f&g Gates to keep his billionaire hands on your stuff. It also (for people who are not aware) keeps modders from modding their 360 and wacking some stuff out of the water with it. (i.e. code, mods, cheats, exploits). It keeps a close watch on people’s systems. I agree it helps the entire network gaming issue, but you’re joking right? An entire update for this? “Yo Microsoft, fix your gaming servers first, then worry about us.” This is 100% your problem and not the 13yr old kid playing GOW online. A.K.A. Strict NAT guys is B.S.

Tagging – Oh God finally! Tagging is retarded! Part of the game, good DEFENSE, but people just abuse the crap out of it.

Finally:

EPIC if you’re going to fix anything fix what 90% of us have stated, the Party System. Code, hard to achieve, whatever, if you’re going to keep customers and want to make money in the future KEEP THE host names on, and get cracking on the hundreds of hours of overtime you’ll need to re-code this system into the game. Then and only then might you keep a customer. I know I’m only one person, but today 8 of us played together. Or topic of discussion BEFORE the game started was all about these updates. More people keep talking, the more people strike against your games.

Stupid update not only because there is no host name but if you are playing on a non-widescreen monitor the black bars got taken away so now its all squished and looks really ugly! its not fair for the people who have non-widescreen monitors! Looks like crap now! FIX IT!

This update could probably go down in history for THE Worst update since the debut of colecovision. Sure reduced nade tagging distance is great, and the problem with not being able hear people is fixed, but removing the names of the hosts on ranked matches? That basiclly defeates the purpose of a friends list when it comes to gears. I used to join games and wow will I never do that again. Occasionally I joined games w/o any friends but only when I was very bored. But getting stuck with 8 year old Timmy who sticks a guy with a smoke nade and wonders why the guy dusn't blow up or the mute (not because of the glitch, he just dusn't talk or has no mic)who tries to snipe a guy across the map with a shotgun gets old really fast. The whole point of an online game is to play with your friends, who wants to go into a game with complete strangers who refuse to cooperate in a *squad based* game.

Nice job Epic, that's if you're trying to repel people. Go search for a ranked game with no filters and let me know how many games you see. Last time I checked there weren't even enough games to fill up the entire box. I was playing with a few of my friends today (oh noes he's playing with friends... /kill ) and about every 15-20 minutes we got the dreaded "your connection has significantly dropped, press B to quit". For an update stressing on the concept of fixing connection issues they did a great job. *cough*sarcasm. Also I have read of many people saying how after the update , the quality of their picture has decreased dramatically. So far so good Epic.

I have absolutely no pitty for the people who just join games and complain about how people want to play with their friends. There's a fairly simple solution to that problem, get some friends and play with them!. Get into a private chat with your buddy, look for a game and join it, bam!, problem solved. And for those you complain about people forming teams for ranked matches, well duh!, its ranked, why wouldn't you get a group of buddies together and *compete* in a *ranked* game. So now when people play gears (that's if they even play it), instead of their team playing in ranked matches, they go in player matches so they can play together. So now instead of people getting owned by teams in the competative section, they'll get destroyed in the less competative more recreational section. There are many games where people play with the same friends, i.e. counter strike & CoD2. And saying that forming a team is "cheating" is just plain idiotic, mods and glitches are cheating.

And in my entire time of playing gears, never have I joined a game and was told anything such as not kill someone for achievements or anything remotely close to that matter.

All in all the patch was, and still is a complete bomb. GoW had it going good for'm, more people were playing GoW than Halo 2, it was a huge hit even before it was released, and after it was released you couldn't talk about the 360 without mentioning Gears of War. Oh well, Halo 2, daddy's comen home.

This is the first patch i have ever disliked, wait, no, HATED

It's like they don't want you to play with your friends...non rank games are a different crowd, they're not as fun to play against and they just give up if they're losing
thanks for solving all of your "rare" glitches first and not your ones that are most important

I'm sure nothing worthwhile will come from it, but I will put in my two cents over the host name removal. I see the upsides of it; making it more fair for lone sociopaths is well and good and preventing outright abuse (as some of the top ranked players have clearly done) is a worthy idea. In the old system, the lone players were often times screwed, yes.

Now, everyone is about as screwed, or frustrated. By levelling the playing field, all of us have the chance, or 'choice', for all players to join a hopeless mishmosh of unorganized mutes. Nevermind that often times lone players would get onto the winning team anyway (winning either by pure skill or by being on a team), and possibly even make some friends to play with. Problem solved, and dont say it's a fantasy because I play with two other friends and have recruited a fourth cool guy almost every night I played. Without being able to see host everyone is equal, yes, but its also much less fun.

And of course, the real irony of it is how futile it is. All that this patch prevents is casual gamers with friends from playing with each other. If my friends are up for it we can still find each other through more obscure match settings and trial and error. Then, we will wait even longer for people to join, and then kill them just as before. End result? The 'hardcore' people play the game less and with more frustration, and casual loners enter games at the same rate and can still expect to play with a random team - which again can be good or bad. Teamed players arent all good and dont always win.

This is obviously a biased opinion, but I'm willing to wager that opinions like this far outweigh the people who were offended by being told to join the other team or whatever. Copy Bungie, indeed. Microsoft lets their system operate, and it works perfectly. I dont know why anyone should have to repeat that anymore.

While I too wish they had a party-system a la Halo2 - I applaud the (hopefully) temporary fix of taking names off ranked matches. Everyone who says "no one ever joins player matches" might remember that the playing field will be a bit more plentiful now that the only way to play w/ friends will be via player match.

EPIC IS SOOOOO! STUPID! This is the worst thing they could ever have done. It is no fun, whatsoever, playing with random people all the time. There is never any team work. I can't understand why these new games didn't copy halo 2. I guess, just like someone else said, it's back to halo 2. A game is no fun if you can't play with friends. The only ones that like the new patch are loners don't have any friends. Well, sorry your all alone. That's not my fault. The only thing that makes a multiplayer game fun is playing with friends. Maybe you loners should make some friends and then you'll be agreeing with me. Well, Epic will realize when they see the number of players dropping fast. They'll realize what a BIG screwup they made. I JUST CAN'T BELIEVE THEY COULD BE THIS DUMB!

stupid EPIC takin away host names they just made the game a lot worse and most people aggree switch it back EPIC you idiots

Wow. I never thought a company could release a patch that could make a game worse, but Epic did it. Kudos to them. The game now has more lag than ever, they've further made it difficult for clans to play with each other, and now the host is an unstoppable juggernaut when equipped with the shotgun (they've got more range with that thing than the sniper rifle). Here's what Epic should do for their next "patch":

1. Weapon balance/hit detection. The sniper is apparently the ultimate close range and long range weapon. There's no way someone would be able to swing that big of a weapon that quickly and do that much damage. There's very little or no splash damage with the boomshot, which is insane considering the strength of the explosion. And as for the shotgun, it's the most unrealistic shotgun I've ever seen in a game. I've gotten headshots from 20 ft away, had the barrel clipping the inside of my opponent and not killed them upon firing, and blown to pieces by people who aren't even aiming at me.

2. Lag. Like I said before, the host is unstoppable because of the lag decrease he/she receives. Imagine trying to kill a host who jumps around because of lag, won't go down after you've emptied your shotgun into him, and can down you from 15 ft away with one shot to your toes with the shotgun.

3. And of course, the removal of the host from ranked matches. Yes Epic, removing the chance for friends to play together was brilliant, because what gamer in their right mind would want to play with their friends? Gamers, when given the choice between playing with a friend they trust or a stranger who would sooner dry hump your down character than help you up, will always choose the stranger.

In conclusion Epic, I'm not that disappointed with you. You've just given me a reason to never play your game again until you fix it. Which I will humbly accept.

removing the host name from the ranked matches was the single stupidest thing they could have done. it just prevents people from playing with there friends which is what the game is all about. i dont want to play with people i don't know. and if u noticed the amount of people who play, it has decreased significantly since it came out. Look at Halo, that game still has more online players then any game out there now and its 2 years old, its because its user friendly and u can easily play with the people u want by settling up a party

simply put explain to me how to play competitive online team games with people who dont speak your language.!!! seeing the host prevented 80 % of this.

thats why you play with friends. now for the lonners out there ranked matches with others o damb k but a party system is the ultimate solution best of luck epic you can find me on lost planet

ps. epic your the f#$#^^%$&^$ ing! TROLL!~ seeker

The updates are nice but no host names is DUMB. It is just stupid because sometimes you can't connect to a game and I used to rember the host's name so I would not join that game again. Why does Gears keep freezin this is my 2nd copy and my friends get the same thing too.

You guys are a bunch of babbies. Who made a rule saying that you cant play ranked matches with your friends. I know I didn't read it anywhere so quit you pussy ass pouting. Who wants to play with a bunch of retards that don't talk they just run out there and die.