No online host advantage in Gears 2

By Robert Purchese Published 20 June, 2008

And cover's near perfect, says Bleszinski.

Silky-haired game designer Cliff Bleszinski promises there will be no online host advantage problems in Gears of War 2 multiplayer.

Wielding a shotgun with next to no lag produced an unfair advantage in the original game, with connection speeds also responsible for some bizarre chainsawing feats.

"People loved [multiplayer in Gears] but they didn't like the host advantage. They got tired of the shotgun inconsistencies," Bleszinski told GamePro. "We're fixing all of that.

"They didn't like the randomness of the chainsaw, so we put the chainsaw duel in - may the best man win!"

Chainsaw duels will be activated when you try to saw through someone facing you and also wielding the weapon. Bleszinski says the duel itself will be quick and over before others get a chance to train their sights on you - there is no animation invulnerability this time.

Gears of War 2 multiplayer will also expand to five man teams rather than four, as well as introduce new modes like Wingman, where five teams of two battle it out like Maverick and Goose in a sweaty changing room. Guardian and Meatflag are two of the others.

These are not the only irksome quirks from the original to be addressed; Bleszinski and team are busy knuckling down on the core cover system. He reckons this worked about 85 per cent of the time in the original, but says the sequel will be much closer to being perfect.

Gears of War 2 is still on course for a November release, exclusively on Xbox 360 in case you were wondering.

We expect much more of the game to be shown at E3 next month. Until then, you can pop into our Gears of War 2 gamepage for the first pictures and movies.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (41) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Hunam #1 4 years ago

    Oh shit, Phatt is fucked then.

  • DDevil #2 4 years ago

    and rodpad.

  • Physically_Insane #3 4 years ago

    THANK. FUCK.

  • Skooch #4 4 years ago

    How are they doing this is what is interesting. Someone has to host the game and they invariably are going to have an advantage. The problem in Gears is that the person who starts up the game lobby is the host and if they had a crappy connection the game was ruined. Maybe it will search for the best connection and make that person host (as Halo does it) but that person still has an advantage - it is just harder to exploit if you don't know who it is - right?

  • Negotiator #5 4 years ago

    Man this is gonna be good, 5 on 5, I love smaller team battles online it makes you feel like your doing something. I think COD4 is finished when this arrives.

  • DFawkes #6 4 years ago

    What do you mean finished? CoD4 is on 2 consoles and PC, so it's hardly finished. You're probably right though, I bet it will get played a lot less on 360, although I never really enjoyed Gears adveserially, just the co-op. Mainly because I'm shit at it.

  • rodpad #7 4 years ago

    Noes!

  • Peew971 #8 4 years ago

    I agree COD4 will be finished but not because of Gears of War 2... It will be because of COD5! This is a huge risk taken by Activision.
    On topic... THANK GOD!

  • Xerx3s #9 4 years ago

    I don't care because I will be HoDíng you all to hell.

    /this was more of a warning to any future teammates who have the bright idea to be anywhere remotely near an enemy.

  • patchbox360 #10 4 years ago

    Sweet

  • dsmx #11 4 years ago

    Why couldn't they make a patch to fix it in the original?

  • Benno #12 4 years ago

    If they get rid of host advantage, benno will be pleased.

  • Xerx3s #13 4 years ago

    I think this game will suck, just like the 1st one.

    I think you will suck, just like your...oh.

  • sweeten16 #14 4 years ago

    The host advantage was the biggest problem in the whole game imo. If its fixed i will love it more.

  • Benno #15 4 years ago

    Yeah, host advantage killed multiplayer for me.

    People need to be on level playing fields.

  • Yossarian #16 4 years ago

    Host advantage was one of the reasons I couldn't bring myself to regularly play Gears after about the second or third week it was out.

  • alimokrane #17 4 years ago

    But is it even possible to fix that host advantage issue, that's the question or is he just talking shit. I'd presume if you're hosting a game you will always have a slight advantage.

  • ArchiRag #18 4 years ago

    Awesome news, now make it so people can't weopon slide, crab walk etc... oh and also make it sopeople can't go off the map- got seriously annoying trying to find them, but great news for ranked games

  • Xerx3s #19 4 years ago

    "People need to be on level playing fields. "

    Yeah, I know what you mean. It makes it a whole lot easier to kill with the hod when they have nowhere to hide. :D

  • Xerx3s #20 4 years ago

    "But is it even possible to fix that host advantage issue, that's the question or is he just talking shit. I'd presume if you're hosting a game you will always have a slight advantage."

    GoW multiplayer was a hindsight at best. It was added less than a month before release. Epic was very unfamiliar with the live system (hence the very crappy implementation of parties). It is very likely that they made several very large errors that couldn't be patched.

  • Crovax20 #21 4 years ago

    So the chainsaw duel will be whoever can mash the button fastest? I hope they got something against autotrigger pads in that case... good luck winning against those

  • major_tom #22 4 years ago

    what the shit? you gus are still playing gears? Jesus I really need to renew my live sub.

  • Yaster #23 4 years ago

    "Wielding a shotgun with next to no lag produced an unfair advantage in the original game, with connection speeds also responsible for some bizarre chainsawing feats."

    Exactly the reason I stopped playing Gears 1

  • Benno #24 4 years ago

    So ye, as alimokrane said, do you think its even possible to get rid of host advantage?

    Sounds like this might be just hot air.

  • symmetry #25 4 years ago

    I never notice host advantage in Halo 3 or COD 4, so yes, it can be done.

  • Benno #26 4 years ago

    There is host advantage in both. Certainly not as much of a problem.

  • Teamallstar #27 4 years ago

    If what they are saying is true, it will have sorted the one thing that prevented this game from being amazing.

  • Nithron #28 4 years ago

    Wow, his explanation of it makes the first game sound like utter shite.

  • bonker #29 4 years ago

    Guns suck.

  • Bloodloss #30 4 years ago

    Don't really care about the host, it's every single American having a significant advantage over me because I live in Europe that ruins most games on Xbox live for me. If they can fix that, I'll be happy.

  • Phattso #31 4 years ago

    Given that, even with host advantage, I was still teh suxxorz things can't get any worse for me. :)

  • Xerx3s #32 4 years ago

    "There is host advantage in both. Certainly not as much of a problem. "

    I think that this is what they mean. Obviously you can't eliminate it on a p2p structure but you can minimize is by optimisations in the code, which wasn't done in gow. Personally I've not noticed it a lot but that's most likely because I often get to be server.

  • Benno #33 4 years ago

    You need to have dedicated servers for gods sake. Just like socom II on the ps2 online, was never any lag or host advantage in that game.

  • anephric #34 4 years ago

    I imagine it just means they've nerfed host weapons, particularly shottie.

  • Xerx3s #35 4 years ago

    5 vs 5 can easily be hosted on p2p. There are plenty of examples of games up to 30 p that run fine on 5vs5. Only games like frontlines really benefit from dedicated.

  • Fab4 #36 4 years ago

    You can eliminate host advantage by removing the single host and making every player in the game the host. Its called peer-to-peer and it isnt rocket science.

  • Xerx3s #37 4 years ago

    You know about network programming I presume?

  • Fab4 #38 4 years ago

    "You know about network programming I presume?"

    I'm a research engineer in the field of mobile communications and networking, so yes. Many people confuse p2p (everyone sharing information with everyone else) with the client/server model (everyone else, apart from the host, only communicates with the host). There are issues with using a p2p system though, such as NAT traversal, but this should be easy to overcome through the use of a a centralized matchmaking server (which is used anyway, even for a client/server model). CoD3 nearly had it perfect, apart from from their handling of the checking of the connection to the in-game 'host', where this 'host' was only responsible for setting the game parameters etc. This led to the infamous "Game Session No Longer Available" messages, but i'm pretty confident there are ways around that particular problem.

  • General_Zod #39 4 years ago

    How could Epic manage to eliminate host advantage? Unless they have made significant scientific breakthroughs it would be impossible.

  • Benno #40 4 years ago

    Read above lol.

    Dedicated hosts are the way to go, always. Its easys and foolproof and puts everyone on a level playing field.

  • rodpad #41 4 years ago

    1996 called. They want their dedicated servers back.