Originally Posted by
Solus Corvus
I remember multiplayer Doom 1/2. If you were lucky you had a network to play on, otherwise you had to dial into a BBS with IPX emulation to be able to get 4 players. But nobody actually hosted the game - it was true peer-to-peer. There were serious issues if anybody's machine started acting up because everyone got game updates at the speed of the slowest player. It also made cheating really easy because all the clients had to agree on the outcome (sorta). But the very next id software game ( quake ) supported true client/server with 16 players - and quakeworld released in late '96 supported 32 players already.
The multiplayer system described so far for COD:MW2 sounds like a client/server layout with the server simply always being on one of the client machines. It has some of the advantages of client/server layout like a laggy player won't slow everyone else down. But it will make cheating even easier IMO. All someone has to do is hack the server on their machine and then when the game picks them as the host (because of their monster machine/connection) they basically have full control over the match to do whatever they want.
A dedicated server allows for so much more though. Players can inform admins about cheaters. Admins can record server side demos and investigate the allegations. Players can be banned. And then the COMMUNITY on that regularly visits that server won't have to deal with that particular scumbag again. But in IW's system how are you supposed to deal with cheating? The clients can't record server side demos and client side demos aren't proof of cheating (client side prediction messes that up). Even if someone is caught, why should they care? The servers are transient, they'd probably never end up connecting to that player host ever again anyway. So even if there are robust administration options in COD:MW2 (not a given) the player hosting the game would need to be a competent admin (also not a given) - and even then his efforts would be wasted as soon as the match shut down. And if there aren't robust admin controls then how the hell is the community supposed to deal with cheaters, griefers, etc? I'm curious to see how IW implements this, but I can already see a lot of potential problems introduced by this method.