The Crew Boots Players Back to Title Screen When Their Internet Drops

[Smooth Operator]

Well the actual "always online" issue has not been answered, but based on Ubisofts track record there is no reason to believe this game would not have it or that they will tell anyone about it being there, after all they have a massive microtransaction store lined up for you.

And yes this is the same awful way most games are handling connection issues, however there are few that actually try to do something about it.
Warframe for example will simply turn your co-op mission into a solo if you lose connection and you play on from the exact state the mission was in, if your connection resumes then other people can join again, granted the game does glitch out this process half the time but at least they made an effort.
That sort of advanced design is what I would call next gen, not your cash shops or poly counts.

 

[NLS]

As a developer, you cant win, can you?

You pretend online experiences are going to be all roses and rainbows, and you get shat on.

You acknowledge that if you lose connection mid match in a multiplayer game, you're going to be dumped to the menu, which sucks. You acknowledge that host migration sucks and is going to be disruptive to your experience.

You then get immediately torn to pieces for acknowledging that certain parts of online interactivity are open to disrupting your experience. The things he's addressing arent even exclusive to this individual title.

If you lose connection to the internet, you get dumped out of the match. If the game uses P2P, and the host leaves, the game experience stalls while host migration takes place.

These arent some newfangled problem with this new title, its a developer being upfront about problems that have been an issue since the birth of internet gaming.

Quoted for truth.
God damnit, do people even bother anymore? The game is pretty much an MMO racer. The single-player campaign is woven into the multiplayer, there's no separation of game elements.
In short: MMOs and all online games require an internet connection, welcome to 2014.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Why does Gerighty seem to hate his own game? He is not defending its online aspects particularly well...

I suspect he's had a decision(s) forced upon him by upstairs and he's making his opinion known as loudly as possible so that when the bad reviews inevitably land he can point a shout I told you so.

Perhaps not a wise move, but using a Peer to Peer connection system for an always online, multi player only game is pretty unforgivable. It's just going to be Russian Roulette Racing as you wait to see which of the rage quitters was the host that's going to kill your game. No doubt it will have host advantage (hello Halo, Call of Duty) where one guy mysteriously knows what's coming a tenth of a second before everyone else.

P2P connection was terrible when Halo 2 came out, but at least it's cheap.

 

[Sonicron]

So not only does this game kick you out if your connection fizzles, but the nature of P2P matchmaking will also likely result in frequent lag. Yeah, that's exactly what we need in a game where the difference between success and failure can be a milisecond.

 

[Alfador_VII]

Julian Gerighty seems determined to sink his own game before it launches, there's a few parts I find especially bad.

"I've got to admit though that I think our connection is a little bit more elegant than the Origin/EA server thing," he added, "but I'd have to get more details to give you a complete rundown. That said, it's safe to say that if you're doing a mission, you lose your internet connection, you're kicked back to the boot screen."

That doesn't sound very elegant at all, and just as bad as Origin. And then it gets much worse.

Furthermore, rather than having dedicated servers, The Crew will rely on peer-to-peer connections, meaning if the host of a current game leaves, everything must stop while the system migrates hosts. "If you lose a connection, then the host will migrate to somebody else," explained Gerighty, adding that host migration "won't be a great experience" for the player.

Sorry what? no servers, only peer to peer, and crappy host migration? Now it makes Origin look amazingly good in comparison, it even makes all the crappy PC COD ports with no dedicated servers look good.

So yeah from being likely to get this game at some point, I now won't even get it from the bottom of the deepest bargain bin, or massively discounted on the Steam sales.

 

[Brian Tams]

Why is it these companies see other successful companies (Blizzard and EA) bang their heads against the always-online brick wall and think to themselves "Gee, let's do that too!"

Like, fuck guys. Gamers have spoken. Always online isnot to be tolerated. You can keep throwing cash at it all you want, it ain't going to be done well.

 

[whycantijustdeletemyaccount]

.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

The people of The Escapist seem upset by this news. Upset enough to not purchase The Crew, not surprising.

You know what game the people of The Escapist seem to like a great deal though? It's Dark Souls. One of the interesting things that happens in Dark Souls is that players are booted back to the title screen when their Internet drops.

I believe there's a connection to be found here.

 

[Bors Mistral]

"I think it's going to kick you out of the race," said Gerighty, when asked what would happen when the game loses connection to Ubisoft's servers. "It's one of those things that the game needs to work with an internet connection so I think you're going to lose the race you're in," he continued. When asked where the players would be sent, Gerighty replied: "Probably [the] title screen," admitting that "It's not the most elegant of solutions."

No, Mr. Gerighty. The elegant solution would be for a tire to suffer a blowout, for the driver to lose control and have a horrific rollover crash ending in a giant ball of raging inferno. Then you fade to the title screen and put up a bloody "attempting to re-establish server connection".

 

[squid5580]

Wow I am not used to such honesty from a dev. At least not from one who isn't swimming in their Scrooge McDuck vault made from a broken game. So is there anything good about this game?

 

[Racecarlock]

If this game is an MMO, why didn't they mention that at e3? I mean, we need to know these things so people don't get pissed off when you say losing your connection boots you to the title screen.

 

[El Luck]

Well at least hes being honest and not going "There wont be any problems at all nope, none. lalalalalala not listening lalalala"

Also, peer to peer connections? Awww ain't that cute.

Though I will say that I think that booting them back to the title screen when your internet cuts out sounds about right. Because lets face it, by the time your connection is back on your gonna be last with no chance of catching up (unless you are playing people who really really suck) and you ain't gonna be having a good time. I think thats about as much as i can devils advocate that thing.

 

[antigodoflife]

If this game is an MMO, why didn't they mention that at e3? I mean, we need to know these things so people don't get pissed off when you say losing your connection boots you to the title screen.

What? What were you expecting when you watched the E3 trailer? An offline multiplayer experience? Heads up The Division is an MMO too.

 

[Racecarlock]

If this game is an MMO, why didn't they mention that at e3? I mean, we need to know these things so people don't get pissed off when you say losing your connection boots you to the title screen.

What? What were you expecting when you watched the E3 trailer? An offline multiplayer experience? Heads up The Division is an MMO too.

Need for speed most wanted also has heavy multiplayer emphasis, but it does have a good single player that you don't need to be online to play.

It looked like it had AI. I think even NFS rivals has offline play. I don't see anything this game really has over those games.

 

[Scorpid]

Somewhere a EA PR man is reaching for a form to fire this guy and he doesn't know why.
Seriously though if you don't know the exact details of your own game then you probably shouldn't talk about it... to a reporter. Leave the the defalted sadness of the DRM to the player base. They'll be more then happy to voice the opinions you have right back at you but with more bad grammer and all caps. Since I don't play racing games I wasn't going to play this anyway but I'm double not going to ever play this now!

 

[J Tyran]

If this game is an MMO, why didn't they mention that at e3? I mean, we need to know these things so people don't get pissed off when you say losing your connection boots you to the title screen.

What? What were you expecting when you watched the E3 trailer? An offline multiplayer experience? Heads up The Division is an MMO too.

Need for speed most wanted also has heavy multiplayer emphasis, but it does have a good single player that you don't need to be online to play.

It looked like it had AI. I think even NFS rivals has offline play. I don't see anything this game really has over those games.

Need for Speed: Rivals got it right, the multiplayer aspects are only as invasive as you want it to be. The thing is with The Crew is it should have been marketed as an MMO or multplayer only game, they talked about the multiplayer but never called it what it essentially is.

They created a false expectation with people thinking it would be like NFS: Rivals when its really a semi persistent MMO like World of Tanks and other games like that.