Any XBox Live players here?

If you think that's rough, try levelling a shotgun with lag. Ugh.

But they all tell me it's worth it once you unlock damage. It just takes forever to get to it.

 

I keep telling myself that lag has been fixed. It's something I'm doing wrong that's causing me to spend half a clip on an opponent only to have him go one shot, one kill with his ump-45.

 

Had a 22 win streak tonight playing with the C4B guys. 22-0 to be exact. I think the closest Dom match we had, we "only" won by 90 points.

We did have one TDM match that went down to the last kill, but otherwise, it was sheer domination (not the game type, but how the team fared). I even carried my own weight in a few of them (the rest of the time, I was more or less along for the ride. LOL)

 

Wow, very nice. So, how does that work? You guys join the same party and wait for a match lobby to fill up? Sorry, I have no team experience.

 

Pretty much. We had 5-6 guys at any given time in the group. Obviously, you can't queue up for mercenary in a group, so it has to be team oriented games, or games you can enter as a team.

Our preferred gametype is Barebones. Beautiful playlist. No killstreaks. None. Just gun on gun, and it can revolve through TDM, KC, or Dom. Having no killstreaks at all makes it a very rush friendly play type. No UAV spam. But more importantly, less incentive to camp as nobody is protecting their streak. Of course, there's still campers... or these guys will make people camp out of fear. LOL

We had 7-8 at one point, so our only option was to enter Ground War matches because good luck finding a lobby otherwise with that many.

 

Ahh, that makes perfect sense. I've never played Barebones, but that does sound enticing. Bound to be less camping/shots coming out of walls.

Camping out of fear LOL.

 

That was fun last night, thanks for inviting me in. :-D
One question: W. T. H. is up with campers in barebones? It's barebones.
I almost never listen to chat, so that made it all the more fun. LMAO @ the weird kid kissing his mic.

 

We shake our head at that too.

You missed a few of the best players from that board. Probably the best is a guy named "Fatty." He's an Aussie, and makes just about everyone look bad. He's also a right prick to campers on the mic.

If everyone from that board who plays together logged on at the same time, we'd almost have enough to do 2 full teams. :o But to a man, everyone attacks. Period. Holding 2 flags and choking off the enemy is a good way to win in Dom. We don't do that. We try to cap all 3. It's more fun. And yeah, a well organized camping team might get the best of us every now and then, but rarely will they get us twice.

In MW2, they even had a C4B Clan. Their motto was "We're the reason you hide and camp."

Still, for organized play, Barebones is nice. No killstreak spam, choked air support. Frankly, that's taking it easy on the other guys. Give Fatty and a few others air support, and it would get really nasty.

 

I imagine so. Guys like me would spend most of the game running around trying to find someone to kill.

 

Like me too. Like me too...

 

USAS shotgun now gold.

ACR is next. Possibly tonight. It's pretty close. I just find it funny that I got a shotgun to gold before any assault rifle. As long as I've been playing, I almost never used shotguns.

 

Impressive, sir.

Do you play Barebones with the C4B guys mostly, or is that just once in a while?

I can't imagine ever getting a gold shotty, as I almost never use them. I try, but I usually end up switching classes pretty quick. It's funny, because on certain days I'll piss and moan that shotguns are overpowered, then when I use them I get owned.

I haven't played much lately, as I've been spending more time on RDR. How is lag comp lately?

 

I play Barebones with those guys 3-4 nights a week for an hour or 3 (weekends they stay up later). And I'll log maybe 2-3 hours a week playing solo in Mercenary. I felt the same way about shotties not just this time around, but for all of the CoDs. But these guys urged me to keep at it. You just have to learn your limits and pick your spots with them. When I'm on, they're DEADLY even in my old hands. On nights when I'm not on, I go to a fall back class.

Best tip I can give if you ever decide to work on them is use an Overkill class. Especially with Sleight of Hand Pro (so switching weapons is faster). That way you can have your best gun also at hand. When in doubt, use your main gun. When feeling confident, and especially in close quarters, pull the shotty out. Over time, you'll get more confident until the day comes that you realize you hardly ever pull the SMG/AR out anymore.

I already have over 1000 kills with the USAS. The time flew by really. I just find it funny that my SCAR and ACR have been in Fall Camo for 2 months, and were half way to Gold before I ever picked up a shotty... but my shotty got to gold first.

Lag comp is same ol' same ol'. When it's good, it's fine. When it's bad, it's awful.

 

Awesome advice! I was on for a while last night and Overkill is the way to go. I've used Overkill before, but didn't really see much benefit in it, and never went back to it. To give insight into how little I actually use the shotties, after using it with overkill last night, I unlocked the silencer on the USAS. On a side note, I had the absolute worst team I've ever been on. Seriously...it was really, really bad. It was like the perfect storm of suck for a game lobby.

Question- how lame is Quickscoping considered in the mw3 community?

 

Its controversial. Most agree that it's a tool that's useful for when a sniper is caught with his pants down. But there's less agreement about whether it should be used ALL THE TIME.

90% of those who run around quickscoping suck at it anyway. But in the hands of someone good... yikes. We have a guy at C4B who is way too good at it. He's ridiculous. If I try it, it's comical.

I stopped being concerned about rage quitting. I call it justified quitting now. If my team isn't even going to try. If it's packed with a bunch of sniveling c... owards who just want to hide in a corner in their own spawn, I leave. I won't put up with that anymore. Or, sometimes, I get a sick sense of humor and find the corner hiding, prone babies, and spam my own non-silenced fire over their heads to call attention to where they are.

Oh, and FYI: The USAS is full auto. Something I only found out 2 nights ago. It doesn't fire fast, but holding the trigger down does give you a faster follow up shot.

 

This guy is pretty funny ('cause it's true). Watching these helps me keep a sense of humor when I'm getting irritated over the game.

[youtube:3ap41d6t]IySyljx3nEM[/youtube:3ap41d6t] Lag Comp

[youtube:3ap41d6t]mGwYkX5Aq5k[/youtube:3ap41d6t] The Camper's Theme Song. He uses Black ops here, but any CoD it applies.

[youtube:3ap41d6t]jYMQMGvjRuc[/youtube:3ap41d6t] Grizz was the guy who started the whole "trick shot" sniper fad in coD4, and spawned Eleventybillion lame wannabes.

Spoilers for adult language.

[spoiler:3ap41d6t][youtube:3ap41d6t]73UKnn5fSbo[/youtube:3ap41d6t][/spoiler:3ap41d6t] Just LOL... and /guilty

 

Gotcha. I hadn't looked into it, but I suspected that it was of the same ilk as akimbo FM-9s. You're right though, most of the people who do it are bad at it. I do come across the random guy who is amazing at it, and I find myself cursing his name while secretly having quickscope envy.

That's how it was last night. It was comical at first, but after a while it was just ridiculous.

I did NOT know it was auto! Not sure why I didn't know that, but I thought it was semi-auto. That changes things a little bit...

 

Ok, I didn't even watch the other ones yet. I just scrolled down and watched that one (something about it appealed to me more). :-D
Arguably the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. I laughed so hard I had to take a break from it. Breathless laughing and tears, Ray. Tears.

 

Alright, I've watched the others. Hilarious. The first two were especially funny.
"Laggy laggy laggy laggy laggy" "I'm out" "Shotgun shoots pure dust"
"Lured by the scent of my smores" I make a smore reference almost everytime I play.
The 2nd one had me laughing right away. I loved how he just sat there. LMAO.

 

I need a little lag/lag comp education. The last couple days, I've been having some pretty crappy experiences. Last night playing with you, it was what I would consider...kind of bad. That Bakara match was leaning towards the pretty bad side. Today, I played for an hour or so, and it was REALLY bad. My wife was watching, and even she was like 'WTF!?'. First example: I was trying my hand at improving my quickscoping abilities (I know, I know) and at least a couple times I popped two shots off at someone at close range, only to have them hit me once or twice with their m4a1 and kill me. In the killcam, I don't shoot at all and they fire many rounds. Switch to new lobby. I try my hand at using the AA12 shotty for a bit. I turn a corner and unload 4 or 5 at a guy center mass on auto. He hits me once and I'm dead. In the killcam, I don't fire at all.

So, is that lag or something different? I had 4 bars in all the lobbies I was in. I did a ping test on my pc after, and it was normal for my connection. I don't want to sound like a whiney crybaby, but it makes it pretty unplayable for me.

I should add that I noticed my NAT was changed to moderate for some reason yesterday. It's always open. I changed it back and there was no noticeable difference.

Last night you mentioned something to the effect of me being hosted. What does that mean exactly? I assume it meant that I was assigned host and was 'punished' by being compensated for it. Is that right?

 

Welcome to my world.

Last night, every time I heard you complain (and many times I was sharing those experiences against the same people), I'd check the bars, and you were at 4 bars which is supposed to mean you had an optimal connection. But other folks in the room were at 3 bars, so lag comp was pwning us. Then we had a match where everyone had 4 bars, but you were having horrible luck. That was when I said you might have been host for that match. The host, in this game, has a huge disadvantage.

CoD games never run on a dedicated server. Instead they run P2P. In essence, the "server" is one of the guy's own XBox in the lobby. Everyone is playing and relaying info to his machine. Host is chosen usually at random, but the code does search for the "best" host (based on bandwidth, and location in relation to the rest of the lobby - central location being optimal). If there's more than one good choice, it shuffles host every other match.

In the past (CoD4, MW2, WaW), if you were host, you were GOD. Everything you did was ahead of everyone else. And if the rest of the guys had slower connections, it was pretty lopsided with advantage. Starting with Black Ops, they tried to even that out by utilizing lag compensation to a higher degree. They create lag comp by using a technique called "time rewind." In essence, they slow you down so the guy who is lagging is on the same time as you instead of behind you (in theory). But it's tricky to get it right, and so far, they don't have it balanced properly. One of the problems is the lag comp is set at the beginning of the match, but you know probably better than I that connections are not static. So maybe you're really fast, but slow down later (and the lag comp now makes YOU lag) and/or maybe a guy was slow when it was set, but speeds up a bit, and now he's ahead of everyone else. That, and the code may adjust too much in favor of the lag guys to begin with.

As with most on-line games, you'll want to optimize your connection anyway, even considering lag comp. If you're playing through a router, find the port forwards for the game and set them up. You also want to manually set your DNS within the XBox itself to a server with the highest capacity / fastest connection. Being an IT guy, you can figure that out easily I'm sure. But if in doubt, setting it to 8.8.8.8 (Google) is a good compromise.

And of course, if you make any changes, restart everything to make sure they don't bug out on you.

Other than that, you just have to grin and bear it while they try to find the right balance. And if it's so bad you don't have a chance, opt out and find a lobby that plays better for you.

 

Thanks Ray, that helps. I haven't visited my router's port forwarding configuration for a while, so I should probably have a look and see if the settings are still relevant. My only head scratcher is- why now? I've made no changes to my configuration, so why the noticeable difference? I guess it's just a combination of coincidences. Either way, I'm off to experiment with some settings.

 

They keep tweaking it. The last tweak made things worse for me. Like I said, when you're in a good lobby, it's fine. But when you get in a lobby with a bad host, or a wide distribution, lag comp becomes pretty awful. You don't play as often as I do, so the effects may be more pronounced to you.

One other thing to try is to either enable or disable your theater recording within the MW3 menu (just before XBox Live). Some people find it makes a difference for them one way or the other.

 

Well, it turns out that port forwarding wasn't configured correctly anymore. It was at one time, but it was reset to factory default for some reason. Anyway, after making those changes I noticed an immediate improvement. It wasn't perfect, but everything was faster. I never connect to xbl even half that fast.

Probably so. I'll disable theater mode and see if I notice a difference.

 

Sorry I missed ya, TTF. I saw you log on (which surprised me considering the time). But by the time we had an opening to invite you in, you were gone.