I just came back, I can't event play it right now, it's like Gears 2 level of bullshit all the time. I hear that it has no dedicated servers now? WTF?

What happened? I was enjoying this game before, now it's back to Gears 2 host bullshit, nothing works like it did, and hit's do not register.

I guess I will be done with Gears multiplayer though because this is not fun in this state...

I played around two weeks ago and it was fine. Have they released an update since then or something?

Haven't played it in a while. I'll have to check tomorrow, if I can be arsed.

@big_jon: Dedicated servers are still around. Just that you don't know when they are online or not. If they're not, you go back to peer to peer.

Yeah it sucks but on average I still get games with good ping.

If you don't have the DLC you can only play on the dedicated servers if you play in the players choice playlist

@buft: Yep, that's right. I stopped playing because of it.

I don't usually go down the whole "vote with you money" road but if you advertise dedicated servers on the back of the box then restrict them 5 months later then I'm forced to.

I really enjoyed the game, it was my personal GOTY last year but I'm not comfortable supporting that choice.

@IkariNoTekken said:

@buft: Yep, that's right. I stopped playing because of it.

I don't usually go down the whole "vote with you money" road but if you advertise dedicated servers on the back of the box then restrict them 5 months later then I'm forced to.

I really enjoyed the game, it was my personal GOTY last year but I'm not comfortable supporting that choice.

was a big dissapointment for me because i bought all the DLC for 2 and never got to play them because not enough people did, i vowed never to pay for maps in GOW again

@buft said:

@IkariNoTekken said:

@buft: Yep, that's right. I stopped playing because of it.

I don't usually go down the whole "vote with you money" road but if you advertise dedicated servers on the back of the box then restrict them 5 months later then I'm forced to.

I really enjoyed the game, it was my personal GOTY last year but I'm not comfortable supporting that choice.

was a big dissapointment for me because i bought all the DLC for 2 and never got to play them because not enough people did, i vowed never to pay for maps in GOW again

Same boat here.

@big_jon:

If you're still playing this game at all regularly you should just buy the DLC. Fenix Rising has five well-designed maps and the Season Pass is a great deal. It seems to be some sort of weird principle amongst certain sections of the gaming community that "DLC is evil; I will not give the publisher any more money" but if you're enjoying a game, why not spend a little more to extend your enjoyment? So I have no sympathy for Gears-heads who won't pay for DLC. And as for Gears 2, for the last 15 months of that game, there was an entire group of playlists, which were well-populated, that required all DLC. However, lag did return to Gears in the weeks after the Fenix Rising DLC, even for those of us with the DLC, so that is a legitimate complaint. Supposedly, this has been fixed by title update 3.1: http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/en-US/news/article/2012-02-tu-3-1-announce

I really wish they would bring in some way to play only DLC maps, a more refined selection or even straight up CHOOSE which maps you want to play (like Gears 1). I really fucking hate multiplayer games that take away player autonomy like this.

If I can get some money together I may grab the maps, that is a big if though.

That's a real shame that you're having such a bad experience with this game. I have FIOS now, so I don't ever have lag problems like that, and luckily get host a lot of the time on the games I play.

On the topic of DLC, I usually just buy the maps to play online or play with bots. I find the bot matches pretty fun. At least that's what I did with Gears 2.

You need all of the DLC to play on dedicated servers. Every playlist except the bottom two playlists at all times (the weekly crazy playlist, and just dlc maps playlist) can be played without DLC but they go back to the Gears 2 days of hosts.

The problem comes from the fact that this game still runs in the dedicated server manner where servers never take a break, it is always one map into the other. This causes people to still treat it as a drop in and drop out game as it was before. So there are a lot of host migrations now. The problem is, a host migration at any point causes the entire round to reset itself. I have played in games for 45 minutes there the people on the other team kept leaving and their teammates would get host and continue to leave. Host migration resets everyone's lives back to 25 in TDM. And on rare occasion it has resent the amount of rounds won in the match total.

@MasturbatingestBear: I say again: thank goodness I own all the DLC. I would hate to play with lag or regular host migration. The lag that I experienced in the fortnight after the DLC seems to have been erased by TU 3.1 and I'm now playing the Fenix Rising maps more often.

The only problem with all this is that now I only play with people who have all the DLC (and are thus on the dedicated servers) the competition level in games has risen sharply. There are few few noobs around (presumably few of them bought the DLC)!

@davidinwrofy: That's when you learn how to play proper gears online! (AKA the real fun)

To be honest the good players have always been around, just covered with plenty of newbies. Now that the buzz has faded off I can get some good ol' high level games where everyone's playing proper and working together.

@supamon: Indeed. I know "it's good for me" to play against the high level players (and after another 4 hours of play at the weekend, it looks as though that is what is happening now) because it improves my game and stops me getting lazy, but I do enjoy a game against noobs once in a while: it makes me feel good and it helps my KD so it is a shame I won't be seeing so many of them any more!

I just hate how they put in Team Deathmatch so now people don't play Execution.

And to play Execution you're stuck voting on the worst maps against Warzone...

@davidinwrofy: Haha I get what you mean. You can't really play gears without concentrating and it can get tiring when you keep losing against seemingly invincible players who wall bounce around you like you're a stationary flag pole.

To be honest you shouldn't care too much about your KD since it doesn't really reflect your skill in teamwork or how other players stole help finish your kill.

@Doctorchimp: I agree.. I wish TDM was never put in since it just promotes mindless bum rushing and don't get me started on the sawed off...

Actually it is on of the most fun games to play online. Have you tried opening your NAT?