darianX
02-06-2003, 10:21 AM
After playing for 2 months and seeing drops daily, either by myself or by the other guy, I've seen some things that are common to the situations. A drop occurs if either of the following are done:
1. Talking before the faceoff. This includes during team selection and the opening stuff just before faceoff. If someone speaks before that puck is dropped, there will be a dropout. It seems similar to the thing with Mechassault and the dropouts as the game is started. Some hosts have 5 seconds of silence or mute before hitting start.
2. Changing settings before the faceoff. Includes turning off voicemasking, editing your lines, etc. Note that this appears not to include changing strategy before the game is actually launched. Not quite sure about that but it seems to not affect it.
These 2 observations have been proving true on every occurance of a drop for one week. Sometimes a bad connection will cause a drop, but these are pretty sparse. I've only seen one guy drop because of his connection...we played for 2 periods when he dropped off. The error showed was "loss of connection", not the "network synchronization lost" error.
The bottom line, in my opinion at least, is wait until the game is going before changing stuff. Use the mute button to assure you won't talk before the game. Several people I've played waited until the first play stoppage to make their changes and everything worked fine. Those who did it beforehand were dropped. That is what made me look into the causes of the faceoff dropouts. I'm no engineer for sure, but if neither of the 2 conditions above are met, the game will run just fine.
Perhaps Microsoft should investigate into the possibility of having a controller lockout and automatic mute before a game begins. For example...when the host presses start or whatever...the game locks the controller and mutes the headset until the game has started and is running for a few seconds. I bring this up because it seems several of the games have these "pregame" issues. Mechassault, Ghost Recon, NHL 2K3, even Unreal acts funny if there is talking going on during the load screen. Talking during a map load in Ghost Recon either causes bad lagging, host lockups, or forced game dropouts. Very interesting...
1. Talking before the faceoff. This includes during team selection and the opening stuff just before faceoff. If someone speaks before that puck is dropped, there will be a dropout. It seems similar to the thing with Mechassault and the dropouts as the game is started. Some hosts have 5 seconds of silence or mute before hitting start.
2. Changing settings before the faceoff. Includes turning off voicemasking, editing your lines, etc. Note that this appears not to include changing strategy before the game is actually launched. Not quite sure about that but it seems to not affect it.
These 2 observations have been proving true on every occurance of a drop for one week. Sometimes a bad connection will cause a drop, but these are pretty sparse. I've only seen one guy drop because of his connection...we played for 2 periods when he dropped off. The error showed was "loss of connection", not the "network synchronization lost" error.
The bottom line, in my opinion at least, is wait until the game is going before changing stuff. Use the mute button to assure you won't talk before the game. Several people I've played waited until the first play stoppage to make their changes and everything worked fine. Those who did it beforehand were dropped. That is what made me look into the causes of the faceoff dropouts. I'm no engineer for sure, but if neither of the 2 conditions above are met, the game will run just fine.
Perhaps Microsoft should investigate into the possibility of having a controller lockout and automatic mute before a game begins. For example...when the host presses start or whatever...the game locks the controller and mutes the headset until the game has started and is running for a few seconds. I bring this up because it seems several of the games have these "pregame" issues. Mechassault, Ghost Recon, NHL 2K3, even Unreal acts funny if there is talking going on during the load screen. Talking during a map load in Ghost Recon either causes bad lagging, host lockups, or forced game dropouts. Very interesting...