Gears 2 stagnant on Xbox Live activity chart despite DLC

I still play Gears 2 but not sure for how much longer. Depends mostly on Epic getting a patch out ASAP or not and if more people start taking advantage of all the glitches. Seems like there's a new one everyday. This game is riddled with them.

Here are many reasons why Gears is not at #1:

http://x2theg.blogspot.com/2008/12/this-is-compile-of-gears-of-war-2-epic.html

http://x2theg.blogspot.com/2008/12/this-is-compile-of-gears-of-war-2-epic_24.html

The game is broken and needs a HUUUUUGE patch like last month before it's off the Top 10.

The top games are up there because they've good matchmaking systems. If you look at it they're in order from good to bad in how good their matchmaking/lobby system is...

Well except dash of destruction it's the "X" factor because it was free...

Its surprising to see Halo as number one on the charts because it was released a little over two years ago. Typically, games have a much shorter robust multiplayer lifespan on consoles. Halo 3 being holding the number one spot says a lot about how well Bungie designed the game.

Wow SeNiLe911, thanks for posting the link to that. I knew Gears 2 had online problems but wow, seeing all that make it to the final release is just terrifying!

From an art perspective it's pretty much the same but Gears 2 tried to force multiplayer cooperation down our throats in a more tactical and team based way compared to Gears 1. I understand Epic wanted the first Gears to be tactical but it didn't work out that way so they should have let it be. It went from an in your face close range shotgun game to a medium/long range lancer battle. Even if none of the awful glitches made it into the game it still wouldn't be number 1 on XBL because the changes were not necessary and were actually unwelcome.

All they had to do was eliminate the bugs & glitches from the first game and give us new modes and maps. Instead they made unnecessary changes that no one seems to understand or agree with and have thus affected the core gameplay that made the series the best game available on the 360.

My Problems -

*Serious glitches that were never fixed and new ones that are worse (to many for me to list here)*
Awful matchmaking
Overpowered Lancer
Underpowered Shotgun
Tweaked Sniper downing w/active reload compared to Gears 1
Bad level design
New Heavy weapons should only be for Horde and Campaign
Exploding smoke grenades are not consistent
Antiquated menu setup
No unranked matchmaking like in Gears 1
No "ready" button / stupid voting system in pre-game menu
Serious issues with the NXE party system within Gears 2


These are only some of the issues I have with the competitive multiplayer portion of the game and does not include the campaign or Horde mode.

Let me try to make a sports analogy to better get my perspective across. Gears 2 making these changes was akin to the Phoenix Suns trading for Shaquille last year. They had a competitive team and a run and gun system that worked. Now with Shaquille the entire philosophy of the team has to change from one way that was very successful. They may have not won a title but they had a system in place that worked for them. You don't need to do an overhaul of something that isn't completely broken in the first place. If you do make changes make them in ways that upgrade and expand upon what you are already trying to accomplish instead of reinventing the wheel.

Hope that made at least a tiny lick of sense.

But isn't halo 3 just like halo 2?

at the top of the chart?

My problem is that it's NOTHING like Gears 1. Cliffy has said many a time that the multiplayer in Gears wasn't what they intended it to be, however I think it was a pretty brilliant 'accident'.

It riles me that the guys at Epic can be so pigheaded to think they know better than their customers and have tried to change the dynamic of the game so dramatically. In doing so they've just fucked up the game I love.

That and it's glitchy and laggy as hell.

My problem with GOW2 is that it is so wasteful of my time. Even if matchmaking worked *perfectly*, there are still too many stupid countdowns all over the place. Here are my suggestions for getting this game back in shape:

- Remove all the stupid countdowns (especially the 20 second one at the end of a match).

- When I hit BACK during a match and see the stats, I should also see the rules of the current game.

- When voting for a game type, show me the description of the game type BEFORE I vote for it (duh!)

- Keep strangers together after they play a match.

- The D-pad sucks for weapon selection, but I guess there is nothing that can be done about that.

- Create more gametypes where the player has more than one life.

That's how I felt about the first Gears. Whenever I played it I felt more frustrated that anything, and so I moved on to other things. Though, in all fairness, I apparently was pretty bad at it.

What are you talking about? Why don't you actually pop Gears in your 360. The DLC is a separate play list from the others and doesn't stop anyone w/o the dlc from playing online.

True, but its splitting up the people who do and do not have the dlc, on the assumption most people who download the DLC play those downloaded maps more than any other, leaving the people without the DLC to only play against other people who don't have it also.

/signed

I find it hard to believe that you have been playing Gears since day one, as I have been playing it since day one and have experienced pretty much all the brokenness (i know not a word) that this game is accused of having. This game is so glitch ridden right now, and I know people get tired of hearing all the "complaining", but it becomes frustrating when not much awareness is being shown on Epic's part(imo) when there are so many people that loved the first gears and are trying to learn to like gears 2.

I'm surprised that you're surprised that people still play Halo 3. It's my go-to game, I play a few matches a day when I get home from work. I'll be playing it until the next Xbox comes out. Best money I ever spent.

My go-to game is burnout paradise or Viva Pinata TIP lol. Not halo 3, i just thought it should have died out by now

STELLA!!!

Wow tmac. Late adopter to a game of this calibur? I finished the campaign in split-screen co-op which was awesome fun. Great campaign, far better than Gears 1.

I won't ruin anything but the last boss was a fucking joke compared to Raam.

I still haven't played through the entire campaign either. I enjoyed some split screen coop with a buddy when he was here for thanksgiving, and haven't touched the game since. I think we got about 1/2 through.

Right, and Halo 3 was a fucking revolution.

If Gears 2 was more like Gears 1 then it'd be doing better, but instead they fucked with the MP mechanics and then added more glitches

Arrrg my new awesome avatar won't appear.

(obligatory avatar won't appear comment even if I know it make take several minutes to appear).

at least yours appeared the first time. i've tried different ones a bajillion times and none of them ever showed up.

This is my second one actually :D, but I submitted a new one that just refuses to appear, and I spent 20 minutes on paint doing it =(.

I set up an account on the forum of ateaseweb.com named Burt Reynolds, and for some reason the avatar picture from that site became my Joystiq avatar.......and I'm too lazy to change it....

I had this problem. The only browser it worked in was firefox. Don't know why, but it wouldn't update from IE, Opera, Google, or Safari.

Mine's update something and then I have my old avatar back it's really weird.

resistance disappointed me. the bosses were epic but that's it. the co-op was good for 2 days then it got removed from the top of the games stack and placed in the drawer. cod:waw and lbp are pretty much the only games that are ever in my disc drive with the occasional fallout...

It's really not that broken at all.

It's mostly just people like you who hear from people who hear from other people, none of whom have actually played the game, that the matchmaking is broken in some way that you can't specify....

See, I disagree. The shield glitch alone is enough to make the multiplayer too broken to be excused. That's a simple thing to fix (patch it so you can't pick up a new weapon while switching weapons), but they just haven't done it. Plus, the damn shotgun can kill you from way too far away. Screw that stupid gun.

I admit, after that patch, it's easier to find matches than it was before, but I still sometimes have to try way too many times for a top-tier game that's got this many players online at any given time.

Client side hit detection means more chance for hacks.

You either modify the network stream or hack the box, and *poof* your character is invulnerable.