24 players online isn't enough
by sweep
Having recently played Call Of Duty 4 on the PC as oppose to my more traditional weapon of choice (the 360) I found my return to the console slightly frustrating. The game remains consistently excellent, although the variation in player cap has caused me to furrow my brow. PC players can fill rooms with up to 50+ players. Those potential player caps have existed since Call Of Duty: United Offen...
Having recently played Call Of Duty 4 on the PC
as oppose to my more traditional weapon of choice (the 360) I found my return to the console slightly frustrating. The game remains consistently excellent, although the variation in player cap has caused me to furrow my brow. PC players can fill rooms with up to 50+ players. Those potential player caps have existed since Call Of Duty: United Offensive. The playstation2 allowed larger teams on Socom that the Xbox currently does on Call Of Duty. There's something annoying about being limited to such a small group of players.
I appreciate i'm setting myself up for a barrage of "Go buy a PS3" or "Get a decent PC then!"
replies, but that is an expensive solution to the fact that the 360
player cap for games remains consistently low. I'm not suggesting that
Gears Of War 2 would benefit from an enhanced player limit, but with
the graphical capabilities of these current gen consoles it's
disappointing that there is no option available on the 360 to fill
rooms with more than the standard 24 players.A lot of the time the games don't really require any more than the low cap which currently exists. Games like Gears Of War and Left 4 Dead have been designed for small squad-based gameplay, and the playing style is consequently completely different from a typical run and gun shooter like Call Of Duty. However titles like Team Fortress 2 and Call Of Duty 4 could really have benefited from bigger rooms which could then be filled with more people. I often find myself with half a map completely empty. Convolution doesn't really seem to be an issue - especially considering these games already run fine with an enlarged player base on the PC.
So, the problem must lie with the hardware.
Either raising the player cap would result in a dramatic drop in quality, or Microsoft is too cheap to pay for some dedicated servers. There are a fair amount of successful shooters out there which have raised the bar for FPS games, and I feel by now developers must have a fair understanding of how to control the flow in a multiplayer session. Look at the minute attention to detail that went into balancing the Halo 3 maps for instance. So there really is no excuse for Microsoft to not have at least explored the potential market for a large scale online shooter. Fuck console MMO's.What really frustrates me is the fact there hasn't even been an attempt to break these minor boundaries. It should be possible to create a game with bigger horizons and give players the potential to explore with more than just 11 other team-mates. I want "warzone" to actually be a fucking warzone.
Thanks For Reading
Love Sweep