What’s The Bloody Point? Multiplayer Console FPS Games

What’s The Bloody Point is Blaine Smith's bi-weekly ranting article where he investigates various things in the gaming industry that really get on his tits, today he's having a rant about Multiplayer Console FPS games, mainly Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. Arguably the most nerd-rage filled genre in all of gaming, the FPS genre has come leaps and bounds since the earlier titles such as Doom, but what can multiplayer really offer?

[KwietStorm]

wut

[kneon]

He's greatly exaggerating the amount of lag, and also implying it is specific to consoles. Any game can lag on any platform if you are connecting via the Internet.

I have a 75mb connection with ping always below 12ms. But if I'm not the host for the game then the quality of the connection will depend on the hosts isp.

Even with dedicated servers the problem isn't completely solved. While you may not get much lag, other players with poor connections might, thus making them appear to jump around, disappear, run in place etc.

Also it seems highly dependent on the game, some games rarely lag while for others it's a frequent occurance. I've been playing a lot of me3 online and it usually works fine but when it lags it is blatantly obvious, everyone but you stops moving or you start jumping around right through walls.

[CaptainCamper]

You can't say I'm over exaggerating at all. Any player that plays MW3 for long periods of time will experience the same thing. I've had problems even with the host is in the same town as me.

Dedicated servers don't even get close to as bad as hosting does. Old school server browsers allowed you to choose a nearby server, practically eliminating lag.

Anyone that argues that online PC multiplayer is anywhere near the low quality of consoles, hasn't played enough of either to make that judgement.

Why should my gaming experience depend on someone's internet connection? Even when hosting myself, I've had corner shots happen.

You're talking about serious lag, usually due to packet loss from the host, a very different scenario to what I'm referring too.

[Morpheuzpr]

I got tired of FPS (well multiplayer) a long time ago. I play games to have a good time and in FPS most of the time you're just mad, team players don't play as a team, lag, exploits, OP weapons or setups ect. So i just stop playing them.

[aquamala]

Even for mp games I like I spent at most 20-30 hours on them, then I see peopl that have 1000s hours of play time. How do people spend that much time in one game? I get bored looking at the same maps.

[CaptainCamper]

I agree. Although, I was able to sink a lot of time into L4D as the tactics involved in that changed every time. Other than that, I don't get into them much.

[kevnb]

Lag + autoaim makes me wonder how online fps on console got to where they are today.

[CaptainCamper]

I didn't want to get into the auto aim, I woulda been writing all day :D

[StrawberryDiesel420]

Black Ops MP is shit for that reason, I want to play the game with zero aim assist, which is essentially what you get when you turn the feature off. However, most people have their's turned on so it makes the game incredibly unbalanced.