Unbearable Latency? Not Here

Ever since Sega of America relocated the PSU servers to their new offices, a lot of players have been complaining about the sudden spike in network lag, which they claim has continued even to this day.

I'm not sure where this is coming from. Latency after the server move doesn't seem to have changed at all. Yeah, it's still frustrating at times -- nothing is more irritating than being killed even though you healed right before getting hit -- but it's not terrible as some people say.

Still, there might be a problem. I have noticed that most of the players complaining about latency are playing PSU on the XBox 360 servers. I don't know anything about the infrastructure of those servers, but if a problem really exists, I'm more inclined to believe that it is occurring there. I myself play PSU on a PC, and our servers seem fine as far as I can tell.

What I do know is that XBox 360 PSU is integrated with XBox Live. Maybe the new network infrastructure doesn't jive well with the Live service. Or maybe it takes the console longer to connect to the servers at their new location. Lots of things might have changed in the move -- IP addresses, DNS servers, etc. Obviously, it's hard to tell what could be going on, but it would be in Sega's best interests to fix the problem before the majority of players decide to leave.

A lot of XBox 360 players who claim that they are being hit with latency issues don't seem to know why this is happening to them and not PC players. Take this comment from a recent forum thread on a PSU fansite:

I really can't understand why lag isn't apperent to the Ps2/PC's but it is on the 360, which by most causes is a supieror processing machine.

Obviously if this is a latency issue, processing power has nothing to do with it. You can't process what the server has not given you. And even if this were the case, under no circumstances does an XBox 360 have as much processing power as a good gaming PC. None. Period. That might be true when comparing the 360 to a PS2, but that's a whole different issue altogether.

In any case, if Sega of America wants to keep this game alive, they ought to focus on investigating some of the problems plaguing it, starting with latency and slowdown. Like it or not, the XBox 360 players are providing the majority of the community funding for this game in the United States and Western Europe, and if they decide to leave, we're all screwed.

And there goes the authentication server. Again.

Yes that's right, Error 060 is back. And this just happened almost a month ago on July 27th. So is this going to be some sort of recurring monthly event? I hope not.

Seriously Sega it's time to invest in some better hardware and software. It's impossible for PC/PS2 version to grow with things like this around.

Update: It's working again, for now.

So much for that whole "update" thing, eh?

Chillaura has posted something quite interesting:

No content updates are planned for the next few weeks. If anything can be fixed before that there could be a server or client patch, but nothing is on the schedule at the moment.

-Chill

I'm pretty sure by "for next few weeks" he means "until September 26th," the date the Neudaiz GBR ends.

Nice. Just when I think things will pick up for the game Sega pulls this crap on us. We are already behind schedule; so what the hell is Sega doing?

The White Beast Problem Reloaded

As stated in this post over on the official forums, a significant update appears to be coming with the end of MAG 2 this Friday.

We would run the official announcement today but our web developer is working remotely from the UK SEGA office and will most likely put it up early tomorrow morning.

I can confirm:

Fireworks Lobby
Neudaiz GBR
New Story Mission
New Free Mission
New Rare Mission
5 S2 Missions
Post MAG Missions
New Weapon Boards in Shops

-Chill

Obviously, given Sega's track record over the past few months I would take this with a grain of salt at this point. As with all unofficial announcements, this information is certainly subject to change.

The one unfortunate aspect of this update is that everyone will be running back to White Beast the instant the server comes up. The Neudaiz GBR runs through that mission, and since the GBR has historically (on the Japanese edition of the game) been released with related S2 missions, it's an undeniable fact that we will have White Beast S2 come Friday.

Here's the point: in terms of drops, White Beast S2 is far and away one of the best missions the online game has to offer thus far. The 12* bow (Nasuyoteri) and 11* whip (Vish Feara) make their appearances for the first time on the US/EU servers, as do the 12* and 15* Yohmei armors (Asura-senba, El-senba).

There are some other notable drops there, too -- check the link above for details. But putting all this good stuff in one place only further ensures that nobody will ever want to leave White Beast. The other planets have playable missions, too. If Sega really wants players to explore and play them, a massive tweaking of the drop charts is necessary. Spread all of White Beast's great drops out to the other missions and see what happens!

A drop chart rebalance is the only permanent solution to the White Beast problem. Events like the Mission Spotlight ultimately fail to draw people away from White Beast: most players only show up to the Spotlight mission when GMs are there, and these same players often leave once the GMs are gone.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that Sega will ever do anything to break players' fascinations with White Beast. Looks like we'll all be heading there to find parties for the forseeable future.

MAG 2's TA Cheaters Dethroned

(Re-posted to fix the title in the RSS feed.)

Here's an interesting development: A team of four PC/PS2 players has beaten the old top TA time of 7:28, which was set by a group that was (and still is) strongly accused of cheating with the mechgun glitch.

I'm inclined to believe that this new time is legit, since the group that posted it just happened to win MAG 1's TA competition. I have to laugh at the team of glitchers that got knocked off the top -- it's already pretty sad when you have to cheat to win a contest in an online video game, but when you make the effort to cheat and still get beaten by legit players, you really suck.

The current list of top-ranked TA teams can be found here.

MAG 2: The boredom has set in

I'm not sure what's causing it, in a way I want to play it to get on the kill leader boards but I just can't find any motivation to do so. It could be a number of things like how we already hit the 200 million prize or that I already was ranked for kills in the first MAG or even how this whole thing was delayed two months. But whatever it is (spoilers: I blame the delay) I can't bring myself to play MAG anywhere as much as I did the first time.

Also what happened to having regular updates during MAG2? Granted at one point Sega talked about passing on MAG2 to continue on with updates. I don't understand why they can't do both but seeing how long it took for MAG to come back I'd rather have new content over MAG truthfully.

This game needs some new content fast to break this cycle of eternal boredom caused by MAG.

MAG Cheaters Strike Again

You'd think would-be cheaters had learned something from the fiasco at the end of the first MAG event. Players using the "mechgun glitch" to cheat their way onto the personal and TA leaderboards were removed from the competition after they were exposed on the official PSU forums.

Apparently that didn't deter other people who wanted to cheat their way to the top of the boards this time around. And it looks like these guys are set to suffer the same fate as their MAG 1 counterparts.

A video has appeared on YouTube that offers damning evidence exposing some of the TA cheaters. At one point the guy in the video goes around checking the equipment of the alleged cheaters, and one of the players in the party is shown to be carrying no weapons except for a single mechgun. Seriously, how stupid are these people?



Sega should sort this issue out as soon as possible to show that it is taking cheaters seriously. It's nice to see that these little kiddies are so bad at PSU that they can't make it to the top of the leaderboards without the help of a glitch.

Pathetic.

MAG2 is here

Well what do you know there wasn't a delay. I would be impressed if it didn't take two months for MAG2 to finally start. Looks like I'll renew my account soon.
For those of you looking for the the new MAG leader boards you can find them here.

Also chillaura has made an official statement that characters who were on the leader boards last time would be able claim another prize as long as they were not removed for cheating in the first MAG.

His post:

The 2nd MAG event leaderboards, both the Time Attack and Kill Ranking, will be open to all players who were not delisted for glitching during the first MAG event.

Enjoy the competition, don't forget to eat and sleep.

-Chill

It's nice to see that Sega is already dealing with the players who cheated in the first MAG.