Epic addresses Gears of War 2 matchmaking hiccups, still no fix

by Dustin Burg { Nov 17th 2008 at 5:30PM }

After hearing the community's complaints and general negative feedback regarding the long wait times experienced during Gears of War 2 matchmaking, Epic's Rod Fergusson addressed the issues over on the official Epic forums. Sadly, there is no hard fix in place.

Fergusson wants the Gears community to know that the long wait times experienced in matchmaking are limited in scale (riiiiiight) and that Epic is working with Microsoft to speed things up. While they figure out the mess, we're given a few tips to improve the matchmaking experience, including: restart the search, avoid 1 and 4 person parties, and (our favorite) skip the whole matchmaking mess and host custom games. With a frown on our face, we await a Gears of War 2 patch ...

Tags: epic, epic-games, gears-of-war-2, gow2

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Rick @ Nov 17th 2008 5:41PM

I know there are people out there experiencing this issue, but I can say I haven't had to wait more than 2-3 minutes. There was one time it went to 5 minutes for matchmaking and I backed out. I'm almost always doing Territories mode, though I don't know if that makes any difference.

Hope it gets fixed soon for anyone stuck waiting.

Flame @ Nov 17th 2008 5:45PM

Lol man i think i have you beat. My longest wait was 15 minutes and still nothing. I said "Fuck it" and went to Fallout 3. Hopefully it gets fixed.

Ellianth @ Nov 17th 2008 7:00PM

my longest wait was over 30 minutes. Luckily i had some friends in the lobby waiting with me. so we all bitched and moaned together. it kinda helped the time pass. In the end we did finally connect to someone, only to have that person be dropped and send us back to the "remote parties restarted the matchmaking process" screen. 5 minutes later it let us play a game... unfortunately it wasn't a game mode that we wanted. And better yet, you're not allowed to quit a game that's in progress.

GO EPIC!!

Ghen @ Nov 18th 2008 10:42AM

My longest wait was about 30 minutes. When the game finally started I was in disbelief. and then I quit the game because I had to give my newborn a bottle. damn.

Benjamin09 @ Nov 17th 2008 5:42PM

Usually backing out and coming right back kicks me to a game almost instantly.

RedSonRising @ Nov 17th 2008 5:46PM

ive been having sporadic trouble with matchmaking, i like horde better than multi so its not that big a problem for me..

4 man party usually takes forever.. i have a really good connection so i dont usually wait long to get into a game by myself..

matchmaking sucks, epic/m$ need to make something happen.. gears 1 didnt matter cause everyone i know searched rooms.

josh @ Nov 17th 2008 10:15PM

Yeah, four person parties are the kiss of death. That shit never works. My favorite tip would be to invite everyone from your recently played list and hope for a five man party which is almost instant.

Bryan @ Nov 17th 2008 5:53PM

I usually play Territories with 5 people and I dont think I waited longer than a minutes, on the other hand have at 1 instance with a slow matching in Wingman.

zach @ Nov 17th 2008 5:56PM

If you have a 5 person party youll have a match in under a minute. If not its your connection :].

Delgado @ Nov 17th 2008 6:09PM

I have not talked to ONE person that hasn't had problems with slow matchmaking. Every single one of my friends has had problems.

My connection is stronger than the majority of people, and around 75% of the time matchmaking is painfully slow. Sometimes it works like a charm, but sometimes I have to sit for 15 minutes, usually switching to watching TV while waiting.

The fixes do work though - full parties are perfectly fast, but having 2 people was not much better (if at all) than just 1. Backing out and restarting does seem to work about half the time, and certain playlists seem to always work better - the Flashback Map Pack specifically.

offday @ Nov 17th 2008 6:11PM

Show of hands. Let's see how "limited" in scale this problem is.

Rell @ Nov 17th 2008 6:18PM

Makes me really think I wasted money.

Bravo6 @ Nov 17th 2008 6:21PM

I gave up on it until there's a fix. Plays fine once you find a match, but waiting 10-15 minutes to find a match is crazytalk.

Too many other good games out right now to waste my time waiting!

Bac0nator @ Nov 17th 2008 6:22PM

The games fun, only been playing Horde mode online right now but i connect to a game within a minute at most.

Ice9 @ Nov 17th 2008 6:23PM

This is ridiculous. Avoid 1 person parties? wtf?! What if I'm the only person on from my friends list? Everything is slow, I put my headset on, start it searching, then switch the screen back to my computer until I hear something in my headset.

Not to mention that going on with 4 people NEVER gets you anybody.

Restarting the search would be less painful if it didn't take 5 - 10 seconds to cancel a search! Seriously what is with that?!

Delgado @ Nov 17th 2008 8:03PM

Haha that is exactly what I do!
One time no one decided to talk in the pregame lobby and I came into the game at about 2 minutes in, I felt bad.

xxTHE D0CT0Rxx @ Nov 17th 2008 6:24PM

I finished the campaign and went back to playing Fable 2.
I was waiting up to 20 minutes to play some M.P. It's just not worth right now.
I will try to get back on because it really is a great game.

OptimumEDGE @ Nov 17th 2008 6:26PM

Epic fail Epic... Epic phail.

druggedUK @ Nov 17th 2008 6:32PM

I've only played in 5 player parties, and that's always been an acceptable time.

A couple of times it was slow, and we just backed out and in and it found a game really quick.

These are pretty widespread problems though, which is a shame.

In A World (XBL) @ Nov 17th 2008 6:47PM

I don't understand how Epic, who has tons of experience with online gaming from the first GoW and UT3 on the 360, could have screwed this up so badly. Did they not TEST their game at all? The annoyance is further compounded by the fact that they had a perfect good system in place (at least in terms of quickly connecting; host advantage killed the fun) for the first game, but instead of just copying that and maybe tweaking it a bit, instead they start fresh with an apparently UNTESTED matchmaking system.

Brucie B @ Nov 17th 2008 6:53PM

Super Slow Mo, most of the time, yet I've had a few that actually went Fast.
I also like how there's still Quitters, or there just lagging out, whatever it sucks. Need to fill in dropped spots, bot or player. Get with it Epic!

Benjamin09 @ Nov 17th 2008 8:05PM

I agree, the host needs to change 360's (halo's does) and bots need to come in to take someones place that has quit.

Grant @ Nov 17th 2008 7:08PM

My average wait time for each games is around 6 or 7 minutes, but i do have moderate NAT settings and mostly play by myself. The worst it has got was one time where i had to wait like 40 minutes for it to finally connect, i just watched tv while waiting, but it's ridiculous either way.

Conor @ Nov 17th 2008 7:27PM

I really didn't expect this kind of crap from a big studio like Epic....

Restarting the search really helps people.
I had no trouble finding matches today....but I was in a party of 5.

brytdavis @ Nov 17th 2008 7:28PM

The matchmaking wait times are insane and a real disappointment. I have yet to play online because I can't get into a game (waited on average for 20 minutes before giving up).

An Epic shame ...

JohnHeist @ Nov 17th 2008 7:53PM

Even in a party of 5 we sometimes have to wait a long time.

On the other hand, a party of 2 playing Wingman will find matches INSTANTLY.

Randy @ Nov 17th 2008 7:56PM

My tip to improve matchmaking....Left 4 Dead tomorrow! Shame Epic

Rick @ Nov 17th 2008 8:19PM

Yeah, because Valve did such a great job on TF2 online...

offday @ Nov 17th 2008 11:08PM

Valve put 5 full, awesome games on 1 disk for 60 dollars. What other company would do that? I don't even know what you're talking about. I always found games fine.

Pudge @ Nov 17th 2008 8:20PM

I had problems the first few days, but after that the wait times have been equal to Halo 3 at peak times in that game. I'm patient, Gears is worth it.

matthew @ Nov 17th 2008 8:34PM

I don't understand why everyone just doesn't copy the Halo matchmaking system, it's always been solid for me. It is an Epic fail until this gets fixed!

Hilltop @ Nov 17th 2008 8:44PM

Today was the first time Ive been able to get more than 2 matches in before saying fuck it and quitting because of the horrible search times.

I dont give a shit about rankings and matching up skill if it cuts into my game time. I cant even get enough games under my belt to really get back into matchmaking mode.

I love Gears, but if over half of my online time is spent waiting for a match there is no reason to play it.

carg0 @ Nov 17th 2008 8:55PM

and M$ still can't figure out why they have yet to reach mass market penetration...

fucking idiots can't even keep their most heavily advertised titles operating smoothly on a service they praise so frequently.

wasn't there a class-action lawsuit brought about, specifically over this, last year?

Stephen @ Nov 17th 2008 8:56PM

I have been able to connect to one game....total. It took me 45 minutes, and I'm seriously not exaggerating. I started the matchmaking one day and then just started to play tetris on my iPod touch, I wasn't even expecting it to connect but sure enough after 45 min it did.

vetosnipe @ Nov 18th 2008 8:27AM

Why would you not re-start the search after, say, 10 minutes? maybe 5 minutes?

SadisticHam @ Nov 17th 2008 9:30PM

"# The most lethal weapon is the Gnasher shotgun with almost 29% of all kills."

I guess I'm the only one being chainsawed 9/10 when i finally get into a game on gears 2. Funny that.

Ah well, back to the superior Gears of War 1 with it's superior multiplayer and superior lobby system. Pity i have to switch discs, the campaign is epic in 2 and so is horde, just the rest blows.

Hopefully gears 3 they'll get a good balance of both.

YGZ Kentucky @ Nov 17th 2008 9:35PM

What irritates me is that my NAT went from being open before i got GOW2 to CLOSED-Strict after i start playing it. It happened with Halo 3 too! This stuff is starting to irritate the pee outta me.

run n gun 26 @ Nov 17th 2008 10:59PM

Try going into your routers settings (type in your IP address in the address bar in your internet browser) and once you get in, check for updates. Works like a charm!

PH @ Nov 17th 2008 11:30PM

Its funny, that the two main games that have awful Live connection issues are also the two that boasted some of the best multiplayer (Castle crashers and GOW2)...And we all know that Castle Crashers issues got fixed very quickly! Oh wait...

It would be less annoying if there was something to do while you are waiting, like check out your collected items or view submitted pictures...

Phizzy @ Nov 18th 2008 12:52AM

I've had a 40-minute wait. It was not enjoyable.

Boff @ Nov 18th 2008 5:24AM

Like many others, I've all but given up on the multiplayer. In my experience the waiting times have been a joke and when I have finally managed to get a game the lag has completely ruined the experience. Loved the campaign, Horde is awesome (been doing private matches mostly) but the online multiplayer has been a complete and utter joke. Major disappointment in my opinion.

If none of my friends are on Gears then it's back to Fable II (at least until L4D is out.)

Chase @ Nov 18th 2008 5:52AM

A woman never goes anywhere but the hospital without packing makeup, clothes, and jewelry.

DiggyStyle @ Nov 18th 2008 8:43AM

In my experience, this is mostly true . My sister just recently had a baby (sure enough, at the hospital) and she had a small suitcase full of "supplies". So there is always an exception to the rule...

I had planned an at least 8 hour session of Gears multiplayer this past Saturday and in that amount of time, I played 5 or 6 matches. We had a 5 man party the whole time. We backed in and out... and then we ended up playing Horde mode when we got sick of waiting. At least I have seen 6 of the new maps.

Oh well, I will try again tomorrow after seeing my sisters new baby. Maybe I will but her a new purse that is Bigger, better and more BADASS!

MDJ2010 @ Nov 18th 2008 6:39AM

My sympothies for all those suffering wait times, after about 60 hours play already my longest wait has been about 2 minutes.

vetosnipe @ Nov 18th 2008 8:14AM

Everything seems ok on my end. Load times of two minutes (at the most). maybe you guys should ditch the 56k modem.

007craft @ Nov 18th 2008 8:55AM

yeah your right. Its us thousands of players who are all on 56k modems which is why we cant get into a match.

Take your ignorance elsewhere.

If your on a train and it crashes and 500 people are dead and injured but your fine do you say, "what a bunch of losers, suck it up cause im fine without a scratch"