Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling has told CVG the studio's working hard to identify and address any Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer exploits before the game launches this November.
"The mapMonkey's are correct," he said. "They're out at the studio to help us run Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer through its paces.
"While we've been hammering away testing on it since it's been up and running, these guys focus specifically on exploits that can potentially be used to an unfair advantage, such as getting outside a map's playable area, inside geo, or find weapon / equipment exploits that were not intended by the designer so that we can catch and address these before it gets out to the public.
"They're a great addition to an already rigorous QA process that the internal team here at Infinity Ward / Sledgehammer and additionally at Activision have been doing since development began," Bowling added.
Publisher Activision has promised Modern Warfare 3 will deliver "the most advanced multiplayer ever". Little has been revealed so far, but Infinity Ward has confirmed it'll feature a heavily revamped killstreak system. Check out a list of rumoured MW3 killstreaks here.
The beta test for new online service Call of Duty Elite, which will launch fully alongside Modern Warfare 3 later this year, is set to kick off tomorrow using CoD: Black Ops.
Comments
21 comments so far...
monkeyd_93 on 13 Jul '11 said:
exploits is one thing....but how about the crappy connection issues that were in MW2? couldn't get into a decent game that didnt lag for ages, even with the patch that "stopped" it.
c3dpo on 13 Jul '11 said:
Let's not forget the amazing lobby game dude ;o)
Seriously, I reckon this wasn't tested outside of Acti's internal servers and if global was connected through their corporate lines! shocking really, and I also reckon the later cod MW2 had it's QA time and resources and Beta IIRC cut.
I wont lie, testing a game is bloody hard but cost cutting dont pay off, as we all dropped due to lobby game, DC's glitchers etc etc
goodf luck QA!
deadstoned on 13 Jul '11 said:
Exploits yeah ok. But what about a bug free release this time? The games costs an additional £10 compared to any other new PC Game, yet Black Ops was one of the buggiest PC releases I've seen in a long time.
Old Skool Gamer on 13 Jul '11 said:
That is due to host's connection most of the time, but also due to the 'ping' between your ISP and theirs.
The patch just corrected the search on their game matching servers, but those issues have been around since COD4.
I'm afraid until a dedicated server system is launched on Live then it will always be the case that everyone will get lag.
markyR on 13 Jul '11 said:
As much as I love COD, I WILL wait to see what the multiplayer is like before putting it on my christmas list. BLOPS is pretty good but the fact I still get connection drop outs on my PS3 is disgusting. But thankfully I can just get it on my 360 this time, unfortunately that means playing with the Americans and not my friends
but at least it'll be smooth and work.
It's a shame that Infinity Ward are not talking up about the online stability, and only about the guns and how well the maps work. We can't complain about the cheaters if we can't get into a game in the first place?
I'm not taking about lag by the way as I very rarely get any, got a very solid 8mbps connection with Plusnet Pro. But I get fed up with the disconnects, the games when your scoring well only to see that bloody telephone socket and cable on the screen, to then get kicked back to the team allocation screen to then get kicked out completely and loose all points!!
Their is NO reason for that to happen, even if someone quits the game the game should be intelligent enough to switch all the games stats to a new host.
Red Deer01 on 13 Jul '11 said:
Doesnt matter, it'll still be broken as hell upon release for some reason. Even the simple things like (i speak for consoles here btw):
Creating parties with freinds. Always broken. You invite them, they join, and next thing you know you can't get into the game together.
Someone will find how to glitch inside or underneath a certain object in multiplayer.
There will be some weird weapon exploit which gives the player an unfair advantage.
It will still be one of the laggiest games known to man due to P2P connections on certain platforms.
The list goes on, the lack of open/public beta testing for a decent amount of time leading to a buggy CoD game which needs somewhere in-between 2-5 patches within the first 48 hours is inevitable. If anything its the CoD legacy now. Plus even if they do have a smooth start this time i won't be there to see it. Thankfully.
KK-Headcharge78 on 13 Jul '11 said:
Hell isn't broken it quite nice actually. Now Homefront that was glitchy, crappy turd. Aside from the care package glitch on MW2 and those getting under the map for a bit in WAW COD generally ranks well in consistent gaming availability, then again I have a s**t hot connection and don't have a PS3.
Multiplayerking on 13 Jul '11 said:
It is not due to the host's connection. World at War and Black Ops are the only games I've ever had connection issues. Coincidence? It's not my connection's fault, or anyone's. It's the retarded game.
Joe90_Remy700 on 13 Jul '11 said:
its the so-called "matchmaking" that is well f*cked up. throwing a party of 6 irish/northern irish players in with yanks, and run on 2 bars
dedicated servers all the way, but the w@nkers fly in a bunch of cheats to find the glitches etc. you think these cheating f*cks will tell you EVERY cheat, if they use these themselves to "win" at the game? about as intelligent as saying the CoD community is the best
KK-Headcharge78 on 13 Jul '11 said:
Wow you've only had connection issues with 2 games
How many games have you played? 2?
MPH on 13 Jul '11 said:
You don't lose the points as such. Even if the host dashboards everything gets saved... you just get a loss on your CR (the host dashboarding or no suitable host being found is the only reason it'll kick you out... unless your connection bombs suddenly - might be different for PS3 networking). Your win streak doesn't get effected by the loss from a dashboarding host either weirdly enough. Only the dashboarder loses some stats; they will get a loss recorded against them but the kills and deaths aren't saved for them only. That's why if someone has a high K/D but a low W/L, it's likely a case of them dashboarding to preserve their K/D ratio. I wouldn't worry about playing with Americans on the 360... I rarely ever come across any. The way the matchmaking works is it tries to pair you up with people from your local area first... if no games can be found locally then it moves further afield.
Btw if you're with Plus.net... have a look to see if you can get Be in your area for their 24mb lines (http://www.bethere.co.uk). I used to be with Plus.net myself but moved to Be about 5-6 years ago and haven't looked back since. The service is brilliant as are their customer service staff when I have called in the past about my router. I tend to get host a fair amount too.
c3dpo on 13 Jul '11 said:
Matchmaking = fail (even on top fibre optic connection)!
Elevator glitch
map collision broken
Jav glitch
Hell you can go on and on!
If only Bungie sold their matchmaking system and MS forced it on all games, now that would be awesome.
Anyways, good luck testers ;o)
MPH on 13 Jul '11 said:
Depends if that top fiber conx is a Virgin one. I've heard that they throttle P2P networking which would obviously therefore affect games that use it like CoD, especially when there's 12-16 players. That actually reminds me, to the guy that uses Plus.net... that was THE reason I left them. They throttled P2P networking making certain things pretty much unusable for me.
gmcb007 on 13 Jul '11 said:
MW2 had to the most exploited game i've ever played. I mean there was disabled timers, super running speed, infinite care packages, rank hijacking and so forth. The online used to be the lawless part of the gaming world.
MPH on 13 Jul '11 said:
Try playing WaW. I cannot get into a single match without someone hacking.
TheLastDodo on 13 Jul '11 said:
Can't speak for 360 and PC but Black Ops is easily the worst game for disconnections on PS3.
I don't know what system is in place in these games but Black Ops in particular is atrocious, my friend list before Black Ops was released was dominated by people still playing Modern Warfare 2, however after Black Ops was released I would estimate 80% of my list traded Black Ops in before 2010 was over.
I recently rebought Black Ops because a guy on my list that happens to be very silvery told me it was much better connection wise, it wasn't it was just as bad. Over 6 months later and it was just as bad.
No dedicated servers support is just another example of Activisions greed, hell they could run dedicated servers off the back of sales of one map pack on 360 alone. Donlt want to give them ideas but I could see dedicated servers being included in the premium ELiT3 sub in the future.
I urge all PS3 owners to take your Black Ops experience into consideration before you get sucked into the MW3 hype machine.
markyR on 13 Jul '11 said:
You do loose all your XP points, on the PS3 you can get kicked right out of the game back to the part where you choose what to do! Off the list of players in the match, or you can get kicked back to the list of the players and EVERYONE has 0 points. That's what I mean, you can loose all the points and not get them back.
As for Plusnet, well I'm in an off-net area that is never and will never get anyone else's kit on the exchange bar BT's so I'm on the same cable and equipment no matter who I go with so any 16mbps is way out the question let alone 24 or fibre, 8mbps is the max I will ever get where I currently live.
And I have Plusnet Pro so I pay to have prioritised traffic 24/7 and have no problems with ping times or any throttling when playing games or anything else.
Now if I happened to live in an area with fibre I would be on BT's Infinity like a shot. Wouldn't touch Virgin if you paid me, great speeds with throttling galore and they also lack equipment on the network which means high contention and throttling.
MPH on 13 Jul '11 said:
Honestly even I've had that happen on the 360, I leveled up midmatch and then we all got disconnected and thrown back to the lobby with 0 points shown for each player, but I still retained my new level. The K/D I had for the match was also shown on the last 5 and 10 games graph. Of course this really is only from my experience on the 360... I know Treyarch screwed up royally on the PS3 so you have my sympathy.
Well at least Plus.net have sorted out that particular issue I had with them. The fact that they did it and didn't reveal that they did it for months really p**sed me off no end. So many people were complaining of the terrible speeds when using P2P stuff... from memory it's only after someone discovered for a fact that we were all being throttled and that they had proof that PN owned up and admitted that they were doing it. It was then that I jumped ship. Honestly if you ever get the chance to get Be if it ever comes to your area then jump on it. In terms of reliability, speed and customer service they are the best ISP I've been with, and I've been with a s**tload.
djreplay on 13 Jul '11 said:
It's bound to be laggy and full of glitches, I'm not touching this game with a barge pole after what happened with MW2.
KK-Headcharge78 on 13 Jul '11 said:
Yeah I'm not bothering with Gears 3 on account of how poor, really poor, the last one was in multiplayer......
NOT
ZeroTime on 14 Jul '11 said:
So this is their solution to creating a "bug-free game" and achieving a "95+ rating"?
Yeah, good luck with that.