Kojima unhappy with Metal Gear Online, admits Konami ID 'not working well'

by Andrew Yoon on Sep 26th 2008 2:00PM

We recommend you read this entire interview with Hideo Kojima at 1UP -- it's filled with great revelations about MGS4 and Hideo's thoughts on the future (including MGS5).

One thing did pop up in our readthrough: Hideo Kojima is unhappy with the number of people currently playing Metal Gear Online, the multiplayer portion of MGS4. Undoubtedly, the cumbersome Konami ID registration process, which requires players to write down multiple IDs and passwords simply to get into the game, became a significant barrier of entry.

"Honestly, officially, I can't say anything on Konami ID and Game ID. It's a company policy. But frankly speaking, the idea wasn't a very good one. The fact is that Konami's direction was that we create a Game ID and Konami ID for the online components, and now we're seeing that it's not working so well, and we have to think about how to turn it around. It was a concept of an online Konami group thinking, so there's not much I could do at the time."

[Via Joystiq]

Source

Tags: konami, konami-id, metal-gear-online, metal-gear-solid-4, mgs4

Reader Comments (66)

I wont lie to ya , the whole log-in process is a pain in the ass , its a great online game but not worth the time trying to remember your KONAMI id and password, hey KONAMI if its free online why are you making it harder for PS3 owners to log on and play a superb online game ?

Yeah its a pain in the ass if you forget your pass words. It took forever to sign up the first time.

it's not really hard to sign up for the two accounts, except when MGO first started and everybody and their mother tried doing it AT THE SAME TIME. This crashed the website badly.

My bigger complaint is that updates are difficult to apply for the same reason...Konami's servers get hammered, they crash, and all the players get irate when they can't get their updates and goods on time.

It would be good for them to throw in the towel and just use the PSN.

Why they didnt use the, already in place, PSN system is beyond me.

Yeah PS3's online play is sooo much better then xbox live since its free!

Uh Oh.

I know not to feed the trolls, but to clarify Ben, Konami decided to do their own thing for MGO. They didn't use the normal methods of the PSN like _every single other game_ does.

They created their own halfway broken ID system through their website that forces you to create at least 2 accounts. They created their own in-game messaging system, ignoring the XMB messaging that every other game uses. Basically they cut Sony out of the loop in every way possible minus the network connectivity.

Hell, even updates don't use the PSN. You either use their jacked up Bittorrent thing or download via http.

This was an epic fail for Konami. Sony gave them everything and they took a big steaming dump on it, and engineered a terribly poor replacement.

oh no he di-ent!

@ Popfrogs

i seriously lol'ed when it said that the torrent download is faster when more ppl are dl'ing it and the http dl is faster when less ppl dl'ing it and the http download took like 2 minutes and the torrent would have taken like 40. that explains a lot about the players am i right?

Konami should hire a new online team becuase they fail in ever espect of online , Pro Evo 2008 online was 100% broken aswell , no idea how it passed testing but it was realesed and i had 3000ms ever single match , 50 patchs later and i get 1000ms nice one Konami....

That's why I have never played MGO. Its a real piss off because I have several buddies who would love to play MGO together.. but the online system is broken and none of us can be bothered.

Bad idea. It's absolutely not beyond fixing.. yet.. they choose not to have to pay to upgrade their servers. They'd rather just be able to say "Hey.. it's there. Feel free to use it, but we're not going to go out of our way to encourage you and incur further hosting costs."

i have forgot both ids konami sort it out i want 2 play but im not BUYING another character

They are still suffering from that huge f**k up that was the release of an expansion.

They need to release a patch that allows us to use out PSN account for it instead, and add an option to link our old ID accounts with out PSN accounts. There, sorted, a game that will be easier to play and they wont have to set up an IP address lottery for you to buy the expansion.

I love MGS4 but I admittedly haven't bothered with the online play just because there's too many things to go through. I've signed up & logged on before but I've forgotten which name belongs to which ID and when I did log on my first time, choosing a game/server was slightly confusing. Call me a lazy American but hey after spending $65 for a game I just want to insert the disc and press start.

Made Zero sense. (get it? ahh nevermind)

i know the MGS universe goes for very complex and deep concepts, but isn't carrying that over to your online experience a little too much?!

@ Benjaxbot09 this is Konami not the PSN numbnuts.

Either way I don't want to pay for a new character slot that is why I don't play the thing. If I wanted to pay for online play I would have an xbox or two for when the other is being fixed.

I lol'd hard on that one.

I'll make sure to add that to my list of Xbox dissing comments.

I really liked MGO, but i never play it, mainly because its a pain in the backside to get into. If they were to make it alot easier to get in, infact, if they made it like every other game to get in, id play it ALOT more.

same here.

I feel like I can play 2 rounds of COD4 before a round of MGO even starts.

I honestly love MGS4 ( my favorite game ) but having that whole process of logging in is pretty annoying. Also, why in gods name wouldn't you use PSN for the online experience (expansion, IDs, updates). This mistake still doesn't stop me from playing MGO ._.

On a slightly different tangent than just the login process (which is too arduous for some people), the game itself should integrate more of the MG01 elements that the veteran players miss badly.

The game is currently too much of a headshot fest. That should be tuned down a bit. Body shots need to conversely be slightly more effective.

And the Drebin Point system is broken. Players who are doing badly have no hope of getting better weapons to compensate, while the good players keep racking up points for the great guns and RPG's. The only assault rifle first offered is the AK-102, which really isn't for beginners, and the VZ smg is not bad but not great. Beginners are forced to pick the VZ if they want to save enough Drebin Points to pick up the M4, which is great for headshots.

Anyhow, I like MGO but I can't see myself playing it very much once Fallout 3 and Dead Space come out unless Konami addresses alot of these issues, which they don't seem to be doing aggressively enough.

I like MGO a lot. On a server that rotates game modes, I could probably sit down for a few hours at a time pretty easily.

But the online registration thing was so annoying after I forgot what the hell my first registration thing during the Beta was. ANDDDDD they put in frickin' ridiculous User ID and password requirements - so I had to create brand new ones, and yeah, I totally forgot them in a split second.

Simple solution somewhat mentioned above is fix this to work with the PSN logon I suggest do it around the release of home with home specific features.

I personally don't get why they did this I think after the success of a unified logon was established as desirable it successful on the xbox and xbox360 and successfully adopted by the PS3, no other PS3 devs have went against this so why go against this. Im sure it had to do with control concerns but if you look at games like GTA4 they were able to still run there own servers that integrated into the game adding extra features. And PS3 still allows for dedicated servers in games such as resistance even the 360 has started to with at least Frontlines and maybe Shadowrun.

It really is a shame that MGO is so crippled because it is very fun.

Metal Gear is my obsession. I logged a lot of hours on MGS3's online game, and spent a good month playing nothing but MGO. I took a break and came back to it a week ago. After the updates were all applied, my stored passwords were missing.

Trying to recover those passwords if you don't have the original emails is impossible. Seriously. Don't even try. Customer support for both IDs is a joke. I'm now locked out of a game I really kinda liked.

I would pay for PSN integration. Not hyperbole. I will fork over $19.99 for an integration add on. Konami make it happen!

I think they really did screw up on this. I mean WHY? to have another user name isn't worth 7 bucks it should be free this isn't freaken 360

One thing i hate in MGO is the responsiveness. Sometimes another guy and i will be shooting eachother, I'll run behind a wall to take cover and a few seconds later i will die. And whenever someone gets a head shot with a sniper rifle i die twice.

Dood it all depends on your situation.

As for the dying after hiding behind a wall, either someone shot you while hiding, or you just lag like hell lol.

But if someone shoots you with a Mosin Nagant, then you die ONCE, but someone gets an EXTRA kill because its tranquilizing.

Konami ID is a completely terrible thing. You have to manage way too many passwords. It just sucks. Hopefully, with the improvements to the PSN ID, developers will embrace a single identity.

When you're playing with serious players, MGO provides some of the best multiplayer gameplay online. If you find yourself playing with hosts that quit, because you're pwning them -- it simply sucks.

i think konami was trying to keep their games some what connected but made it to complex and unnecessarily annoying. it's has shades of social club of rockstar but that's optional.

Note that he says MGS5, that would imply that we would still play as Solid Snake.

Not sure how true that is, considering the majority of MGS2 was Raiden-based =P.

What it DOES imply, is that the story still involves Solid Snake in some way, which still says a lot, since... well, basically what happened at the end. I don't wanna be a spoiler for anyone lol.

I think he's just referring in general to whatever MGS' successor project is going to be, it won't necessarily involve Snake and it would be dumb for them not to continue the franchise in some way (at least in spirit, with a different name and intent).

Also, you played as Naked Snake in MGS3 (which really should have been called Metal Gear Solid 0 or Metal Gear Naked).

All the MGS games add to the story of Solid Snake, so maybe the next game will be another prequel, but with a loose Kojima influence, they'll probably do something wildly different.

I was in the beta for MGO, and the ID process was such a pain that I literally have never played the online version with the final game. I've beaten the single player campaign, but I've never touched the online portion (which didn't really seem that great anyway).

I'm basically in the same boat. MGO is not bad, but jumping through all the hoops of dealing with logging in and updating has made me not play it. It's such a poorly designed system that I just don't want to play it.

They really should of used PSN. In this day and age a web enabled person has way too many usernames and password to remember. If it was 1 ID, not so bad but 2 and with different password requirements and the like...it was HIDEOUS. I generated my ID's, played once and between the ID's and the lobby structure and trying to group etc....I haven't been online since then. Which is a shame because I liked the gameplay online.

So far I think COD4 has the best lobby system, well....minus some level imbalance. However its just a couple of "clicks" and your gold.

One of the reasons I stopped playing. It's a shit excuse of a game. The community has no headsets (pathetic), the chat system is annoying for how it pops up, the lag is crap, the game is region-locked, not PSN compatible. So, in conclusion, I still can't believe anyone plays MGO. It's crap.

The minute I heard of the stupid Konami ID thing I didn't even consider the online portion of MGS4 as part of the game.

That's why we have PSN ID's!

I agree, PSN should of been used.

People have way too many user names and password to remember. So between these 2 IDS and MGO's not so user friendly lobby, I haven't been back on since the first night I tired it. Which stinks because once in a game, I enjoyed it a lot. When it comes to ease of use and just pick up and play online ability, COD is the master right now.

i played the beta and enjoyed it but i hated the konami id bs so much. when i finally got the game i completely forgot my passwords and IDs because i use the SAME name and password on EVERYTHING, my xbox live name, my PSN name, my AIM name, my socom2 name... they were all the same, and same password.

but the most broken thing about konami's system is your game id and konami id have to be different, and the passwords for both have to be different, and one can only use numbers, and one has to use letters and numbers... its like they were TRYING to confuse people.

im glad kojima lately has come out and criticized the game industry in general for their over hyping of games, and for this konami bs stuff.

MGS4 = died in one month. MGO is dead. sorry it wasnt the "phenomenon" you all hyped it to be.

I....uh, i have no response to that. haha. MGS4 was pretty cool, but like most MGS games I just play it once and forget about it.

Actually MGS4 is epic, MGO not so much. I'm sorry that you turned out to be a dipsh!t troll.

The whole konami id is dumb... 2 extra logins and passwords to add on to the psn login...... wat was the point. they could have released their bs add on pack on the ps store. they tried to become somewhat proprietary and failed... i migt actually be playing it rigt now if i didnt have to deal with the logging in method and MGO store entry method

On a slightly different tangent than just the login process (which is too arduous for some people), the game itself should integrate more of the MG01 elements that the veteran players miss badly. The game is currently too much of a headshot fest. That should be tuned down a bit. Body shots need to conversely be slightly more effective. And the Drebin Point system is broken. Players who are doing badly have no hope of getting better weapons to compensate, while the good players keep racking up points for the great guns and RPG's. The only assault rifle first offered is the AK-102, which really isn't for beginners, and the VZ smg is not bad but not great. Beginners are forced to pick the VZ if they want to save enough Drebin Points to pick up the M4, which is great for headshots. Anyhow, I like MGO but I can't see myself playing it very much once Fallout 3 and Dead Space come out unless Konami addresses alot of these issues, which they don't seem to be doing aggressively enough.

Up front....yes I am a 360 troll! LOL And I could not pass the opportunity to say HaHa to your Free unregulated service, where no rules are applied and every publisher can run their game on PSN however the hell they want to. Almost makes me mad that I have to pay an OUTRAGEOUS $4.99 a month (sarcastic) for a well managed and always constant experience.

I hate to be a 360 troll but I could not resist. What do you expect when you make an unregulated online service that allows publishers to do what ever they want with their online portion. It almost makes me mad that I am paying a back breaking $4.99 a month (sarcastic) for a regulated and constant experience.

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Kojima unhappy with Metal Gear Online, admits Konami ID 'not working well'

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