MC2 on the xbox and connection speeds.

Peter Manojlovich · 05-29-2003, 09:54 PM

I'll post the link for the IGN article, it's no longer insider.

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/421/421244p1.html

I'll post the relevant paragraph.

Midnight Club also does something that Microsoft promised all games would do when Xbox Live was announced last year. In MC2, if your connection speed isn't what it needs to be for an online race to run smoothly, you won't even be allowed to join somebody's game. Once upon time, MS told us that you won't even be able to see games that didn't have a certain ping and so you'd be guaranteed a smooth online gaming experience. That obviously hasn't happened. It can be frustrating in MC2 if there are players in a game you want to race against and your connection is too slow to allow it. But on the other hand, guaranteeing a fast online game (at least initially) by keeping laggards to a minimum has its merits as well. Hey we say survival of the fittest has gotten this far, so why fight it when it comes to online gaming?

A heads up for people who are interested in MC2's online component and whose isp isn't quite state of the art.

BrianB · 05-29-2003, 10:30 PM

A great idea in principle...

I'd love to know if there's a way to find out whether your speed is "good enough" /before/ shelling out $50.

Peter Manojlovich · 05-29-2003, 10:49 PM

That's the problem in a nutshell, this is all pretty vague. I think I'm pretty safe with my current provider, but I had to cancel my previous isp and switch because my u/l was so brutally slow, 55kbps. That ain't high-speed in my book. That's not broadband, that's narrowband. What's worse, they charged more than my current isp, which actually advertises itself as xbox compatable. They actually have an xbox setup in their stores even with mechassault playing.

Graeme Clark · 05-30-2003, 12:04 AM

I hope it doesn't turn into another situation with Ghost Recon where no games show up at all for me for whatever reason.

Peter, I assume you switched from Shaw to Telus. Have you actually noticed any improvements? While the Xbox does report a 55kbps upload on my Shaw connection, DSLreports gets over 400kbps which is quite good. It's been speculated that the Xbox's reporting of those numbers isn't good (but it would also be what the games use which is what sucks).

Peter Manojlovich · 05-30-2003, 12:27 AM

Graeme, I never checked my u/l with shaw using dsl reports. My reason for switching over wasn't xbox related. I currently live in what I would call duplex hell, the area is so congested that in the evening it was like I didn't have internet service. I was suffering from so much connection failure that it was getting very ugly.

Telus was much more difficult to setup using the router, and having to register mac addresses. With the telus setup, I register almost identical results from the xbox dashboard or dsl reports. Even with the computer on right now, I'm registering 500kbps. I played very little while on shaw, so it might have been good, I don't know, I didn't stick around long enough to find out. With cable, the congestion can be a nightmare if you live in an area like I do.

As far as the dashboard figures go, the L numbers which I'm going to assume refer to latency are lower on telus than with shaw, 17 ms for telus, compared to 25ms with shaw. I haven't a clue what latency refers to, but I'm going to assume lower is better.

ADSL just seems more consistent than cable. And the area you live in is going to make a big difference. I achieved faster download speeds at times with shaw but telus download has been faster on a more consistent basis. But, basically, when you can't get on, you just want to chuck your modem in the garbage, anyway.

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BrianB · 05-30-2003, 07:29 AM

Quote:

ADSL just seems more consistent than cable.

That's the theory - cable has more potential, but is limited by the number of users, ADSL is theoretical fixed rate regardless of the number of users.



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