Thursday, March 26, 2009

I took a hit . . . but I didn't inhale

When I got on to play Gears of War 2 last night I already had a room full of friends playing. Thankfully another group of friends got together and we started up another room (twice, thank you very much Max). It was a nice casual, laid back room and we were having fun. Until we started one match.

We knew there would be trouble right from the get go when the option to vote for the game type (warzone or execution) didn't even display on most of our screens until after the voting had ended. Most of us did get a chance to vote on the map. We picked Jacinto. And then the lagging started.

It was very hard to run anywhere because while your screen would show you in an open place your character would act like he's stuck behind a wall. It took three attempts for me to be able to pick up some more ammo during one of the matches. And forget about trying to shoot anyone. I put a whole clip and a half from my lancer into someone who was standing still on my screen, but I never downed him. One second later he was crouched behind a block and firing at me . . . through a tree!

But what put me over the edge was when I died by mortar fire when on my screen the guy hadn't even fired it yet. It wasn't until just before I switch to the ghost cam that I saw the mortar shells fire towards my position. You can't play a game like that. It's impossible. So I quit.

Yes, I know with the new ranking system I was going to take a hit on my total experience points and I possibly lost a rank because of that (I was only rank 2 or 3 going into the match), but I didn't care. I can't be expected to stay in a game and "play" when shooting someone has no effect and I die before someone on the other team fires their weapon. It was a much better decision to take the 1,000 point hit for quiting (or whatever it is) then to stay in that game. My teammates, on the other hand, stayed in and tried to get a win.

Since I was still in the party I sat back and listened to what they were going through while I waited for them to finish their game. Apparently the only way one person on the other team could be killed was with grenades. Since those only come up every other round it made for a long match. After twenty minutes of listening to my friends struggle with the laggy game I pulled the disk out and shut down for the night (sort of). I turned on the TV and mindlessly watched a little bit of all 70+ channels before I had to turn my 360 back on and play something productive.

I set my preference to "off-line" because I knew my friends were still playing and I wasn't really in the mood to go back to Gears, and I put in Fable II. After chopping wood for 30-40 minutes I felt better (and I got an achievement for the effort as well) and THEN I called it a night.

I don't know what my total experience was prior to quiting the match so I'm not sure I can tell exactly how much I was penalized. When I log on tonight I just might see my rank a little lower. But for me it was all worth it. I took a hit for quiting . . . but I didn't inhale. And my night was better for it.

2 comments:

Kralon said...

Sounds like you ran into lag switchers. I run into them sometimes in COD W@W. They are easy to tell. The whole team seams to jump around and you can't get a shot off, you just die. I quit and report them for cheating right away. I am getting to the point where I don't think that you should get penalized at all when you quit a laggy game. It isn't fair to someone to have to suffer that kind of abuse at the hands of cheaters.

metallicorphan said...

i'm always pulling out of games on COD 4 and W@W,because of this lag switch thing...worse thing is when you come up to someone and then it happens,and you die,most of the game can be fine,just when you come across a certain player...i pull out because the last thing i want is to help someone(a cheater basically)rank up,why they have to cheat to do this is beyond me,is it really that important to them?..same with glitchers as well,i get out of there and report them

i dont really care about my ranking,so i guess i can't really speak