Thy Melee Issue

[iBotPeaches]

Bungie Weekly Update: 02/08/08 Posted by lukems at 2/8/2008 5:11 PM PST

We'rein the final phase of readying the auto update, which is a short way ofsaying, we’re getting ready to hand it off to the kind folks inCertification, where, like Ivan Drago, the AU will be run through aseries of rigidly scientific tests that last for indeterminable amountsof time. That said, barring catastrophe and disaster, the auto updatewill be injected into your Xbox 360 later this month.

 

We've solidified what will appear in the auto update in addition tothe oft-mentioned adjustment to Halo 3’s melee. There’s a bunch ofuninteresting behind the scenes fixes that will likely be completelyinvisible to the player and a handful of more pronounced changes comingto Halo 3:

OMG Fix Mayleeey, Bungle!

Multiplayer Design Lead Tyson Green checked in with a lengthyexplanation of the melee system in Halo 3, how it’s different from Halo2’s what worked about both versions, what didn’t work and how it’sbeing addressed by the auto update.

Tyson says:

"The Short Version

Melee contests will only produce a winner if he has a sizeablehealth advantage over the loser. Otherwise, both players may die in theclash.

What Halo 2 Did

Put simply, in Halo 2, whoever threw the first melee won. Sounds perfect, right? Not quite.

Get your Einstein on, we’re going to talk about relativity.Specifically, the relative observations of host versus client. In Halo3, across our entire population, we observe an average latency betweenhost and client of around 80-100ms, which is around three frames.Assuming 90ms of latency, consider what happens when the host andclient both throw melee attacks at exactly the same time. The host willsee the client’s melee attack as many as three frames later, while theclient will see the host’s melee attack three frames later. Whoattacked first?

Well, in the halcyon days of Halo 2, the host made thatdetermination. Which means his melee was first and the client lost themelee fight far more often than they should have. And in the event oftwo clients attacking simultaneously, the one with lower latency to thehost would appear to have attacked first, and would be the winner. In apeer-to-peer environment with latency, it is nigh impossible todetermine exactly who attacked first.

Over Halo 2’s three years online, many people adapted and got usedto preemptively throwing a melee, but it was still fundamentally unfairin favor of the host or people with faster connections.

So, to be clear and upfront, we will not be returning to those daysof letting the host win when the outcome is in doubt, aka. first meleewins.

The Halo 3 “Fix”

In Halo 3, there is explicit special treatment for what is called a“melee contest”, which occurs when two melee attacks occur almostsimultaneously. Specifically, when the host starts to throw a meleeattack, there is a short window after that (three frames, orapproximately 100ms) during which the host will watch for a retaliatorymelee attack. If one arrives inside that window, it is a contest.Besides smoothing out the latency differences between clients (it worksthe same way when one client melees another), this allows a client witha ping as high as 100ms to compete with the host on a far more evenfooting than Halo 2 allowed.

So now we have the contests, but how are they resolved? Havingdetermined that we cannot trust timing in an environment with latency,we instead use the remaining health (including shields) of thecontestants as the tie-breaker. This is about as fair as you can get,within the conventions of Halo—the guy who did more damage comes out ontop. Specifically, the winner of the contest still takes melee damagefrom the loser, but is protected from death and lives to fight anotherday.

On paper, this method addresses the host advantage (among others) and is scrupulously fair. There’s just one problem:

The Fatal Flaw

Halo 3’s system is inscrutable. This is most famously illustrated bya splitscreen film (eliminating latency as a factor) of two playersrunning at each other, firing, and throwing melee attacks on the sameframe. One drops dead, and it isn’t clear why, so the result isdeclared to be random. The real reason is, of course, that one playerlanded one or two more bullets than the other, but that isn’t anywherenear obvious.

Any time you have a game system which players cannot understand, itmight as well be random. No matter how fair the tiebreaker may be, if asingle Assault Rifle bullet can slip by and decide the outcome, itmight as well be random. And randomness is a poor substitute fortactics and skillful execution.

Addressing the Flaw

We considered and ultimately rejected some ideas that could havemade melee contests produce a less inscrutable result. A majorconsideration was that we wanted to minimize the impact on how Halo 3plays to the greatest degree possible, while still addressing theproblem. Radically changing the mechanics of melee combat is notsomething we want at this point.

Ultimately, the change is targeted at the unpredictable outcome of acontest. Simply stated, it works like this: when a melee contestoccurs, and both players are close to the same health (includingshields), no special protection is given to either player. This meansthe outcome of a close melee contest can be death for bothparticipants, but that a player who decisively injures his opponentprior to closing for a melee will continue to enjoy the victoriousoutcome.

For those of you uninterested in the precise details, the upshot isthis: if you close for a melee attack and are at a clear advantage (ordisadvantage), the outcome will be clear. If the outcome is unclear,too close to call, you will likely trade kills with your victim. Butyou should no longer watch your opponent saunter away for no clearreason (and if you do, check the film—it tells all.)

The Nitty Gritty

If you’re still reading, you’re probably interested in some details, so we won’t skimp.

A player in MP has a grand total of 115 hit points (to adopt acommon term.) 45 of these are body hit points, 70 are shield hitpoints. For reference, a single AR bullet does 7.5 points of damage,and a BR bullet does 6. A melee attack does 70 for most weapons, withsome weapons (notably the Brute weapons) doing 72.

When entering a melee contest, the combined body and shield hitpoints are compared. If the difference is above a threshold, then oneplayer is determined to have won decisively and is protected fromdeath. After testing with a variety of weapons, we settled on athreshold of 26.5 hit points (slightly rounded.) This translates into4+ AR bullets worth of damage to decisively win a melee contest,instead of simply having 1 more hit point than the other guy.

There is one more wrinkle to this: your invisible body hit points dorecharge, but at a different rate from your shields. While ordinarilythis is a non-issue (we’ve always made this largely transparent), itcan affect the outcome of a contest. For those of you keeping score,body hit points start regenerating 10 seconds after last taking damage,at a rate of 9 hp/sec. So if your shields are up but you’re fresh fromtaking a beating, you could still be in trouble in a contest.

YMMV, etc.

Despite our best efforts, this system cannot cover all cases: ifyour latency is beyond 100ms, you can still get into situations wherethe host legitimately believes that your melee did not arrive in time.In testing, we did catch a couple of films where perfectly balanced,simultaneous melee attacks produced an unexpected winner. But thesewere films recorded by the client—the host film told a different story,showing a very late melee.

The moral: when in doubt, check the host’s film, because latency still matters. Just a whole lot less than Halo 2.

Also, while we were in there, we excised a BXB-style glitch beforeit gathered popularity, and fixed that strangeness where bodies wouldbe hurled with unearthly force by a mid-melee death. We sincerelyapologize to people who enjoyed the latter bug—it was pretty funny."

---

Cheaters

While there haven’t been nearly as many Whambulance-related mailsfor Halo 3 as there were for Halo 2 – the enthusiasm for cheating hasbeen curbed pretty well by our auto-detection system, that doesn’t meanwe’re resting on our laurels, either. We’ve seen pretty frequent abuseof the EXP system and attempts at gaming the Rank system and AU1 willintroduce even more preventative measures to further reduce attempts tofind glitches in the system.

Additionally, cheatery that involves network manipulation will seesome firmer restrictions and swifter punishments. As is always the casewith discussing cheating, we’re sorry for being even more obtuse andconfusing than usual, but we can’t really let on to what we’re doing,because then the Internet’s industrious youth will try and find ways tocircumvent those measures and the cycle’s inevitable continuation isaccelerated. We have a variety of different bans ranging fromaccount-level bans from matchmaking to negating players’ abilities tohost games, when we discover host manipulation attempts or frequentnetwork issues for other players in the game. In addition to thecopious amount of statistics taken by Bungie.net from your game, wehave pretty detailed information about game conditions and network dataas well. Culling through that data has allowed us to continue to makeimprovements to the system.

Bennett, I thought you were dead

http://www.ibotmodz.net/forum/uploads/remoteimages1/6837-13.jpg

 

The longstanding “Elite Commando Shoulders aren’t unlocking with theachievement” bug is being resolved in the auto update. The shouldersweren’t unlocking when the Steppin’ Razor achievement was acquired. Inthe post-auto update era, the Commando Shoulders will be unlocked foreveryone, regardless of the status of the corresponding achievement.

A Host Migrated

Our playerbase across the sea has oft leveled a completelyreasonable and sound complaint about the performance of peer to peerhosting in Halo 3: when entering Matchmaking, often times, they arematched up with U.S. players and their game quality may sufferdepending on the strength of the U.S. players’ host, resulting inhigher pings and latency. In the auto update, we’ve retooled theMatchmaking option “Prefer Good Connection” to cast a wider net to findbetter hosts for players in Halo 3, and will also improve hostconditions for players outside of America.

In order to access “Prefer Good Connection,” the host for amatchmaking game needs to press X once at the Matchmaking Menu toadjust “Matchmaking Options.” This will bring up a menu that includes“Quickest,” “Good Connection,” and “My Language.” Scroll down to theoption you want to use in Matchmaking and Press A. Each time you entera new hopper, the setting will clear, so make sure to reselect it.

Hammered and Nailed

With the vast volume of maps and gametypes being created by ourCommunity, a natural evolution of Matchmaking Playlists would be tocreate a hopper dedicated to Forge creations – user maps like The GreatWall, Anvil and Cell Block 71 – and highlight Community-createdgametypes on those maps, or on existing Bungie-built maps.

The auto update will streamline and solidify the back end and allowus to pull Community-generated content into our Matchmaking Playlist.No, this doesn’t mean that Your Favorite Playlist is going to go away; in fact, it just means that in the foreseeable future there will be a playlist dedicated to your creations.

Decorators Love Center

The next batch of Halo 3 maps continue to chug along in variousstages along their development cycle. Cotton Balls skybox continues tofill out, now giving players who paid attention in Halo 3 some prettyexhilarating context in regards to “where” they are. Frankie says “theskybox has been there all along, you’re just too blind and stupid tosee it – abres los ojos.” I wanted to include a really, REALLYsmall screenshot, but PR would react as though the brown note had beensounded from the Apocalypse Trumpet.

Additionally, there have been some large, guarding, ominous andnatural structures added to the background, stretching upwards into theheavenly skybox. The towering natural spires are foreboding and moody.They are correct.

OK Corral is getting slathered with layer upon layer of polish, justthis week while playing another of our near-daily “Battles for UltimateDestiny” Frankie and I noticed a ton of new visual highlightsand decorators being added. What began as an abandoned shed in themiddle of a partially overgrown thicket has progressed into something quite different.

Walls are marked with scoring from explosions, cement slabs havebeen blown apart by fierce explosions, one room in particular, with itsGod-rays streaming in from a plant, covered dome has been the site ofsome terrible carnage. An explosion ripped a whole in the floor,stripped part of the walls and blew out an entire wall. Anotherexplosion shelled parts of wall off, displaying wooden struts andheavily water-damaged cement underneath. Outside, more blast scoringand water damage stains the cement and foliage growth will give playersan idea of just how abandoned OK Corral has become.

Again, I really wanted to include a small image, especially of this particular area, but Frank said no.

Time of the Season

Next week, folks all over the world over will celebrate their lovefor one another with diamonds, chocolates, baguettes, romantic nightsout and then wives and girlfriends will then proceed get headaches andgo straight to bed after dinner, so what will the husbands do?Hopefully log in to Halo 3 and check out another one of those seasonaltreats we’re putting together.

This Valentine's Day Massacre Hopper will launch next week and istesting a variety of things for us. First, we're planning on rollingout a number of hoppers that will appear in regular, short intervals,generally over a weekend period, and this hopper, which will begin onnext Wednesday and conclude at 2 a.m. pacific the following Monday, isdesigned to test that.

 

The secondary purpose of theValentine's Day Massacre is to look at the tournament system and ourability to collect leaderboard information for a series of onlinetournaments we'll be holding next month. The Valentine's Day Massacrehopper will be a Ranked, lean, Team Slayer-focused version (it willhave a Team BRs variant, as well) of Team Doubles.

Finally

It’s no Mister Chief, but one of the guys TT L Burritoh from Tied the Leadermadea bunch of panoramic shots from this week’s games. I saw them when Iwas checking their write-up for deception. After the wall of text thathas been this week’s update, some images would probably be an Excedrinfor your eyesore.

http://www.ibotmodz.net/forum/uploads/remoteimages1/6837-14.jpg

Download a monstro hires version here.

 

http://www.ibotmodz.net/forum/uploads/remoteimages1/6837-15.jpg

Monstro version is available here.

 

http://www.ibotmodz.net/forum/uploads/remoteimages1/6837-16.jpg

Comongo version available here.

P.S.

Frankie actually made this to sell on the Internet for charity. In association with our friends at Halo.Bungie.Org, the proceeds of the auction will go to the Brian Morden Foundation, an organization working toward a cure for Ewing's Sarcoma. To see the auction or participate in the inevitable bidding war click here. Claude from HBO kindly set up the auction for us.

 

 

http://www.ibotmodz.net/forum/uploads/remoteimages1/6837-17.jpg

"Here lies the last sip of the bourgeoisie malaise consommé." -2007, Pastel on Canvas, Francis O’Connor

 

In case you've missed it, go to the Auction for the above item here

[TheMasterSnail]

FINALY i thought they would never fix this and cant wait for our custom matchmaking playlist!

[Curtis]

I didn't have a problem with beat-downs...

[.Slack♠]

FINALY i thought they would never fix this and cant wait for our custom matchmaking playlist!

omgzorz MasterSnail wow you've posted been a long long long time