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THE ONLINE CUL-DE-SAC by Mr Biffo

30/11/2015

14 Comments

 
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I live in a cul-de-sac. No, that's not a metaphor; I live in a cul-de-sac in the most literal sense anybody can live in a cul-de-sac.

And it's not one of these rural cul-de-sacs, in the middle of nowhere, with a horse wandering around, but a cul-de-sac in a busy London borough.

​And not even one of the quiet bits of the borough, but one that's off a pretty happening main road; if I went outside, I'd probably be hit by a bus, and hear people complaining about the traffic and being stabbed.

Consequently, you'd think I'd have no issue whatsoever with my Internet connection, but you'd be horribly wrong in that assumption. My Internet is terrible. And because my Internet is terrible, I'm finding it a wretched chore getting online to play games. Or download games. Or upload videos to our YouTube channel (I've been trying to get a new video up for a week now). AND IT IS TOTES RUINING MY LIFE!!!!!!!

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SPOILS OF WAR
​I'd been spoiled: I had Virgin's super-fast broadband where I lived previously for a couple of years - in a small road, not even in London - and never had a single problem with it.

However, Virgin in their wisdom have decided that a cul-de-sac with 19 homes isn't worth the bother of installing a fibre optic cable. Result: we are The Forgotten People, and as a 
consequence my options for getting online are limited.

Upon moving in, I initially went with Sky Broadband, but became so exasperated with it that I switched earlier this year to BT Infinity. According to the comparison sites, it was alleged to be my fastest option. The comparison sites are evidently staffed by major idiots, because the Internet has been even worse since switching.

I'm constantly having to turn off the router - which means reinstalling our Hive box every single time to boot - to give the Internet the kick up the chutney it needs. What really baffles me is that one device will be fine, while the others will grind to a halt. Turning it off and on again is the only thing which seems to get all the various devices running at the same speed. For a while.


I should've learned my lesson from the previous, horrible, time I used BT, but it was six years ago or so, and I figured that surely the technology must surely have advanced in the years since. Not down this road, apparently. Down this road we're stuck in 1997.

I can't be alone in this can I? Am I the last person in Britain still struggling to get online to play games?

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TIPPING OVER
​The tipping point of this rage came over the weekend. Against the odds, I actually sort of begrudgingly quite like Star Wars Battlefront.

​There's woefully little content there for the price, but it's one of the few online shooters I'm actually not terrible at.

Presumably because it's populated with more casual players than you get with your CoDs. That's primarily why I like it; I don't feel out of my depth.


But Friday, Saturday and Sunday I found the experience such a chore, due to my poor Internet connection - and for swathes of that time there was nobody else using the Internet in the house - that I returned to seething about EA's decision not to include any kind of single player campaign.

Admittedly, for some of that time the PlayStation Network was down for maintenance, so it wasn't entirely the fault of BT Un-finity... but that sort of makes it worse.


If Battlefront had any sort of decent single-player mode - rather than the woeful, lazy, bot-fuelled rubbish that is in there - I could've dipped into that to get my fix. Instead, I simply couldn't play it. I was a slave to the whims of the PSN and BT Infinity.

INTERNET
I appreciate that this is the very definition of a First World Problem, but I'm raging about it nevertheless.

Maybe I'm in a minority with my Internet grief, but I refuse to believe I'm a minority of one. I can't be the only person still struggling with online play due to the limitations of our broadband infrastructure. Can I?

And it cuts to the heart of why I don't like games which shovel us into an online-only pit: when we play - and I'm talking here particularly about those of us with iffy connections - is almost entirely out of our hands. Which is all the more frustrating when you consider that Star Wars Battlefront has been positioned as a game which is for everyone, not just hardcore gamers.

Well... everyone who has £120 to spend on the base game, plus all the additional downloadable content which they've held back. A robust single player campaign would've solved the issue for me, but I guess that would've eaten into the profits that the game seems so determined to squeeze out of its customers.

Consequence: Rubbishness.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
VIDEO GAMES: THEY'RE ALL BORING by Mr Biffo
HAVE PITY FOR THE GAMES CRITICS by Mr Biffo
FEMALE GAMES CHARACTERS: LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELD? by Mr Biffo
14 Comments
Tinker's Cuss
30/11/2015 11:52:29 am

Yup yup, for me decent bots are the difference between a sale and waa waa oops. Battlefront's run-at-you bots in the demo gave me a healthy Ka-ching! No Sale. Meh.

I still play (has a quick look on t'hard-drive) Battlefield 2142, Quake Wars, Star Wars BF2, Shattered Horizon, UT2004, Section8 Prejudice - all primarily multiplayer games but with fun-to-play bots.
I've got a eye on Angels Fall First, it's shaping up to be what I was hoping Battlefront would provide, just without all the Star Wars and that :/ Ah well.

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Jon Downes link
30/11/2015 11:53:27 am

Is it just me or does "cul-de-sac" sound really dirty. My wife would tell me that it is just me

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Penyrolewen
30/11/2015 08:48:36 pm

No, it's not just you. My mad French teacher taught us that 'pois de cul' (may have misremembered the spelling) is anal hair. That ain't a million miles from cul de sac, is it now? In my French 'o' level (grade achieved: E) I couldn't remember the French for fishing rod (can a peche I think, spelling again possibly dodgy) so used pois de cul instead. Wonder what the marker thought? Anyway, tell your wife it's not just you.

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Keith
30/11/2015 12:17:58 pm

Can someone reassure me that they're terrible at the on-foot sections of Battlefront? the dogfights are great fun, but the on-foot missions feel just as populated by over powered people who know exactly how to kill you in a microsecond as any other game

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dab88
30/11/2015 12:37:12 pm

"AND IT IS TOTES RUINING MY LIFE!!!!!!!" Best quote from you in all week.... and it's only Monday!

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Hamptonoid
30/11/2015 09:05:37 pm

Totes rad!

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combat_honey
30/11/2015 12:51:10 pm

"And it cuts to the heart of why I don't like games which shovel us into an online-only pit: when we play - and I'm talking here particularly about those of us with iffy connections - is almost entirely out of our hands."

The other problem with online-only games is that they're entirely dependent on other people actually playing the game, so when you're considering buying something you have to factor in the risk that the community may dry up a few months after release.

I bought Payday 2 for Xbox One because I'd loved playing it on Xbox 360, but from day one the online matchmaking was completely broken to the point where you literally could not join a single match, rendering the game essentially useless. (You can play with bots, but bots are unable to do literally anything other than shoot, which is pretty pathetic in a game that requires you to take hostages, drill safes, transport bags of loot to your getaway vehicle etc.) The game remained in this state for about four months, and after they fixed it I logged in to try and get a game only to find that (surprise surprise!) no one was playing it, presumably because they'd completely given up on it because of the matchmaking issues. So that was about £30 completely wasted (thanks Overkill!), and I'm now very hesitant to buy any more 'online only' games.

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PeskyFletch
30/11/2015 05:18:36 pm

Great point man, i took a while to upgrade to this gen of consoles(which i use primarily for online shooters as i'm paranoid about hackers) and would have loved to have played evolve and titanfall but i'm not prepared to risk empty lobbies. The only one that seems guaranteed to stay full is the main battlefield series.

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Euphemia
30/11/2015 01:18:29 pm

Funny how many things have to be pointed in the right direction in order to maintain a solid online experience. Software, Console/Computer, Modem, router, local Internet (including any congestion), overall system network, game servers etc., and it's a fragile setup. Baffling that it doesn't die more often, although aren't frequent service interruptions part of the joy of having something trivial to complain about?

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Glynh
30/11/2015 06:50:15 pm

As someone who who lives in rural Wales and only got off dial up 5 years ago and had 0.5mb broadband until last year I feel your pain.

Saying that, I'm the same as you - I now have a speedy 10mb wireless connection which is brilliant but if it goes off for even an hour I get really annoyed.

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Richard Wager
30/11/2015 08:01:56 pm

The web providers are all pretty much pants, Sky being the worst and Virgin the best of a bad lot, when it's good it's good and bad it's blooming awful.. Star Wars is fun too, biffo you have mind read me these are my thoughts too. Have you been visiting me during the night like some sort of BFG...

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CdrJameson
30/11/2015 08:09:09 pm

Online games.
You know what gets me?
No pause.
I exist at their whim, and I better keep up.
Tch, eh?

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Col. Asdasd
30/11/2015 08:11:18 pm

I have nothing but sympathy for any household that can't get Virgin around these sceptred parts. I don't even think Virgin offer that good of a service, but at two hundred feet on a foggy day it does at least vaguely resemble what they promise in their marketing.

The alternatives are like any of the other utilities in this basket case of a supposedly free market nation: contemptuous in the security of their monopolant fiefdoms.

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Senior Pickles
30/11/2015 11:03:34 pm

Sounds like your router is at fault if some devices are fine; maybe consider investing in one that isn't BT's Home Hub?

Had similar troubles with early versions of the Virgin SuperHub which I would describe as anything other than super. Quite.

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