I don't even know why the topic turned out as it did. All I wanted to know is a timeline for the patch and not a single Bethesda response.

sorry that it went off topic but comn you didnt really think they were gonna give you a timeline /release date of the patch did you?

The most likely reason why there is no timeline for a patch is because they don't know yet.

Patching software is not like eating food. When you sit down to eat food you can normally make a reasonable estimate of how long it will take. You can't do that with patching software. Software is not assembly line production (although sometimes in the case of Gears of Duty or Call of War one does wonder...)

First of all you need to know what the bugs are. Communities and sites like this are normally good ways of identifying those.

Then you need to know what causes them. That's not just a simple case of homing in on a line of code and changing it; it may be as complex as "with this CPU and GPU combination, when we run this map with these weapons, these 40 bits of otherwise unrelated code interact is a bizarre way and things go wrong". Software is complex. Game software is even more complex because not only must it be correct, but it must also be fast.

So then you need to classify the bugs. One typical classification may be "by design"/"will fix - priority"/"can fix - not priority"/"won't fix"/"can't fix".

This bit is hard and it may surprise you to learn that not all known bugs get fixed in a patch. Sometimes a bug only affects one person out of a million; no matter how gamebreaking that bug is for that person, do you think it's going to be assigned a higher priority than another less-gamebreaking bug that affects 10s of thousands? Even if that one person likes to make a lot of noise on forums?

So then you fix the ones you've decided you're going to fix. Let's assume from what Brian Harris has said that things are currently just past this stage.

What comes next is you need to test. Do the bug fixes break anything else? Do they cause trouble elsewhere? A simple (and simplistic) example might be something like: if the positioning of the shotgun was wrong and I fix it, does the fix break positioning of other weapons? Again, software is complex and different subsystems may have complex and unforseen interactions. So let's assume - again per Brian Harris - that this is where things actually are at right now, because that's the "QA" phase he mentioned. Can you put a timescale on that phase? No. You can make a ballpark estimate, particularly if you have experience of doing this kind of thing before, but if your "two weeks" turns out to actually be two months because the Mandarin Chinese version explodes when you try to glGetString on GL_EXTENSIONS and everything drags out fixing that, you'll get lots of "wahhhhhh - they pwomised!" wailing on the forums. So instead you keep your mouth shut; the timescale estimate is made internally for sure, but doesn't get communicated to the public.

So that's why we don't know.

I guess I am giving them no patience considering these glitches were found in the first 2 days of playing the game. The fact they shipped it in this condition and charged us money for it gives me no sympathy for them. I will stay on their asses and continue complaining till they fix it. Respect is given where respect is due, and Id Software did not respect the fans with this release.

then keep on their asses man also mention the multiplayer issues on pc aswell why your at it i too am impatiant =)

Any pc sruff you can fix yourself when the source drops.

i didnt make the game so why should i fix it ? mr.marshall please rethink before you post on issues of no concern to you or atleast read back and see what all really needs fixed mp wise on bfg pc!!

I know what you mean but the reality is this doesn't have to cost ID or bethesda much at all. On Doom3 people actually pay out ot their own pockets to rent servers to run doom3 dedicated servers. The only thing ID does is have a master server list running so that these servers can all be seen from the Doom3 (PC) game. There is no excuse for this. If PC players are paying for the dedicated servers the point is moot. The reality here is lazy ass support and throwing everything together without any afterthought. This will only last for so long. But I agree this mentality is destroying PC games and lets be honest here. PS3 and Xbox really don't compare to PC capabilities when it comes to games. There is just a huge gap between them and I know a lot of console player don't want to hear that but the truth hurts. I own a high end PC and I own a PS3 and the PS3 doesn't touch the graphics I get on my PC. Especially in FPS games the PC will always rule and consoles will always be at a major disadvantage. If you were to let both platforms vs the PC platform would demolish the console players in game most of the time (even with auto aim assist for consoles & PC with none lol ). The discrepancies are that big. At one point when I first started playing PC games I really didn't like the fact of using a keyboard and mouse. But in the end I discovered the accuracy is way better than you can get on a control. When going back on console it's almost unplayable now lol. I've gotten spoiled with the accuracy available on PC .

The thing is Stahl it don't matter how close you are to the person you are playing on BFG Multi (PC Platform). A couple of my friends live right down the damn street from eachother and one of them still had over 200+ ping. That is rediculous. The ping should be maybe 20 at most. The issues are clearly there for everyone. The game is broken.

The doom 3 engine is very easy to use, and is a great tech to build something off of. It's hard for anyone that cares about making games to actually start something and finish it, one thing that newbie developers could maybe start as a project is fixing all the crap you guys are complaining about.

I would say close to 100% of the complaints(minus the level sections they took out), could actually be fixed pretty quickly. ID probably fixed some and ignored others(which I can promise you is going to be a mad lash out here when the patch get's released), whoever wants to do it seems to have a huge audience.

To the next guy that was about to say "well why don't you do it", I'm focusing on tech/tools and not so much on game play .

jmarshall, is the multiplayer code in the source?

are we missing the point here i didnt make the game id/bethesda released this game and should be the ones to address the issues i understand your focus of tech tools which btw isnt a issue its more of something that you want!, the post ive made concern only multiplayer gameplay on pc im not a game developer im on the sidelines triing to get something fixed in the multiplayer pc area saying that if we had the source code we can fix it ourselves i quote doom 3 vchat here (ARE YOU SERIOUS!) id developement needs to fix these issues period!

In the doom 3 gpl code everything is identical to the doom 3 2004 retail release, except for a small change to the shadow code, which actually adds more rendering calls to get around the creative patent fix. There is a tutorial someplace on the web on how to fix that or you can jack my shadow mapping code from idtech 4 cdk.

In the doom 3 gpl bfg code will probably include the stencil shadow code changes(like 4 or 5 lines of code) that was replaced in the 2004 code, and has bink/steam stuff removed, but the multiplayer code for the original doom 3 has been aval for awhile now. The new idtech 5 network code that's present in doom 3 bfg will be included in the source drop.


What doesn't get fixed in this patch probably won't get fixed at all unless you guys do it yourselves. I get were your coming from but the reality is you have only three options:

• Fix the rest of the issues you had problems with, that weren't addressed in the patch, yourself.
  
• Get over your problems with the game and play it as is, and hope somebody else goes in and fixes it.
  
• "Rage quit", throw your keyboard on the floor and never play it again .

I actually played the 360 version with my brother and family who are about 40 minutes from were I'm at and we all had under 100 ping.

A.)someone else should not have to fix there problem is that is whats to be expected in ids next release to?
B.)i play the game as is why you think im griping on issues which what better time to gripe when you know there working on a patch!
C.)i Dont rage quit! and throwing my keyboard i would never forgive myself


360 mp is alot differnt then pc mp!!! i find players with pings as high as 600 sometimes my buddy a state over has 250 - 300 ping on pc about every player i see on pc mp has a ping of 200 or more!

A.) You can argue that but it won't get your problem fixed.
B.) I get confused on who is more special than others on here don't take it personally, if what I say doesn't apply to you than don't worry about it:).
C.) Good for you, you have self control .


That's cause every [censored] can just get on there, 35% of the U.S. is still on dial up believe it or not(and that number is higher outside of the US), and you would see more of the 600+ pings if the 360 had a integrated modem .

rolf man please dont talk of things that you do not know because you dont these are players ive played for years and i know there not on dial up and noones special if i wanted a cookie and pat on da back il ask for one but i dont i just want the mp fixes on pc and im not argueing i thought we were haveing a nice chat i hear ur stuff you hear mine and thats it its a discussion forum not a i know there not gonna fix it forum blah blah these forums are here for them to look at for a reason how else do they get the issues of all the players.

We are having a nice chat .


"Three million people are still paying for AOL dial-up" - Tue, 31 Jul, 2012
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/right-click/three-million-people-still-paying-aol-dial-162617653.html

Sadly AOL is just one of many dial up providers that still exist today, and keep in mind if you have DSL and you have the lowest tier your ISP provides that could also be a very good reason for high ping. Now a days to really play most multiplayer games you need cable.

internet connection is not the problem the problem is with the p2p on pc it shouldnt be so bad i just played a german friend last night on his server but still he has the same issues as i do, rip another friend of mine he has them,strayshot has them and i know more that have the same issues do you even play the pc version of d3 bfg?

Well you see on PC that is not the case. I'm also hearing maybe the ping is just showing wrong and just the distances will cause lag. This is still not the case with PC because you could be in the next room playing the game and have over 200 ping on the PC next door and also lag like hell. So I'm not sure what it is but its a problem that needs to be fixed.

Regarding doom3 being dead well of course the game is pretty much dead. Because of the horrible net coding and lag people left. I was expecting bfg to resolves those issues so it could be a competitive game just as quake 3 is. 120 FPS and 120 htz is a night and day difference I'll admit. But if you cant play it without lagging then whats the point lol?

BTW quake live is crap in comparison to quake 3. I can have 20 ping in a server on Quake 3 and I'll have 120 on quake live (same distance to server) and my shots won't count in quake live. It'll just bounce off them due to the latency.

Regarding your comment about our internet possibly being at fault. Are you joking me? I have DSL now and I can tell you it is actually more consistent than the cable I had from Time Warner Cable. One big reason is Time Warner cables lines are tied up by many using the damn lines. Even at 30mbs and 5mbs upload it wasn't always the best connection. I have a lot more consistency on my DSL line and I can assure you that is not the cause of my lag. If that was the case I'd be lagging on all my other games (with dedicated servers ). Now concerning dial up users (lmao) let's be serious here the majority of people are using some form of Cable or DSL these days. The dial up craze is over, technology has advanced and the data age is here. That means more capacity, more excess. I'm sure there are still a large number of dial up users in total but in comparison to the majority it's extremely small. Plus who in their right mind would want to seriously game with such a crappy connection? That is a very important factor if you are an online gamer.

That's why i got the impression that the ping indicator shows false values.

I was playing with four people. Three of them living close to me in germany, one in the US east coast.
I opened up the first game in germany.
The three guys living next to me had a ping of 180-200, the guy in the us about 250.
The us guy had some lag, the guys in germany none.
Host advantage not present.
We all won a match one after another.
As i said, it felt like playing on LAN.

When the US guy opened the next match and the three german guys connected to the us, we ran into the known problems.
Totally unplayable for the guys in germany although the ping counter showed similar values.
It didn't feel like a ping of 200 though. It felt more like a ping of 600!
It's expected to have more latency when more people connect to a server that's far away as more data has to travel far distances but that doesn't explain the completely unplayable situation afterwards and the similar pings to the playable game before.
Remember: it's just four players and all of them running on DSL or faster!

Thing is Stahl are you playing on PC or Console? Because the issues may be a bit different between the 2 platforms. I know latency when I see it and the delay is very much there when vs. on someone else' server. Only when I have 0 ping is when there is no latency issues, then my opponents are made to suffer (plus the game is no challenge for me at this point). There is no such thing as playing someone close to you and the game feeling like LAN. Not on PC that's for sure. I am still able to beat people however with these ridiculous pings. But mind you I am having to work much harder than I would without the lag. Taking that into consideration I'd dominate most people to be honest without the lag issues. Example I'm having to shoot 2 to 3 seconds ahead to get my shots to connect. The rockets, grenades and plasma are pretty much unusable with this latency. The doors take 2 to 3 seconds to open opposed to opening up immediately. This alone makes it hard to control the map or escape when necessary. With the shotty, machine gun and chain though I am able to plan ahead and get frags with them. But as I said I'm having to work much harder than I should for these victories.

Basically what Bethesda has released is a joke and they should not be charging money for this type of crap. I am just shocked that they could release something of this quality. What's even more disturbing is if this becomes a norm and people actually accept this crap. Unless people speak out they won't do anything. Look at MWF3 (same old crap P2P and no anti-cheat support, the very first day hackers where running rampant already). That game is a joke and an insult. The developers don't care because people keep buying their crappy games. Until you take away their bread and butter they will not change. The same concept applies to the American Automakers. They kept making crappy cars on purpose to save money and to ensure the cars wouldn't last long so that you'd have to buy another car. The Japanese automakers pretty much shut them down with quality builds which people caught on to. They stopped buying American POS cars and the American Automakers hit rock bottom. Only now are they learning because they have no choice. Which is pathetic still no matter how you look at it. The mentality svcks. The problem is they milked it for all they could while they could and that's just wrong.

I played the original pc release on pc back in the day and the BFG on 360 now.
I have great experience with playing over the internet over the last 20 years from dial up to DSL on pc and consoles. From Duke Nukem 3D over Q3 to Doom3 and now all the stuff on Xbox live.

Basically, the difference between pc online play and playing games on 360 live is not that large.
Xbox live seems to be a bit more effective when it comes to bandwidth usage but the basic effects of connection speed and p2p or dedicated servers are the same.
I played lots of multiplayer with Duke Nukem Forever on 360 and that worked exactly the same as on pc.
The shown pings gave the expected results.
That's different with Doom3 BFG. It always shows me pings between 150 and 250 no matter how good or bad the connections is.
I noticed yesterday that my voice chat was disabled "due to account restrictions". Something i've seen only once before on XBLive: While playing with Rage.
Doom3 has the Rage network code built in....

I never had a ping of 0 while playing online anywhere. Neither on pc nor Xblive. But i can assure you that playing Gears of War 3 in 4 player coop makes you feel like you're playing in LAN. Admittedly Gears coop is not as fast as competitive deathmatch but you usually don't feel any lag.

While playing our first Doom 3 match, the only thing i noticed was a SLIGHT delay in opening doors. Nothing more and easy to work with.
Like you, experienced players automatically compensate this.
The second game though was so horribly laggy that even my shots with the submachine gun didn't go off although permanently pulling the damned trigger.
The ping counter still showed me about 200-250 like in the game before.
And that's my point: I'm sure there is a major bug in the netcode! On all platforms!


Yup, but the effects you mention should only happen when you play with lots of people spread all over the world.
Doom 3 DM is limited to 4 players. I don't expect such lag issues in these times with such a low playercount anymore.
In fact, the last time i had such a bad lag was in the 90s while playing over a dial up connection...


I totally agree on the hacker issue. In fact, it makes me play in private for most of the time.
If you know the people you're playing with, you can be sure nobody's pulling your leg.
Btw.: Does Punkbuster still exist on PC ?

As long as casual gamers buy such games and accept this cesspool of multiplayer gaming, why should they change anything?
I'm sure that the oldschool competitive players avoid playing MW3 online.


Nowadays you can swap "american automakers" with "asian tv set makers". Built to brake....
Looks like this strange mentality of selling broken products never dies.

Ok well that makes sense. It means that Xbox 360s lag issues aren't as bad as on PC. So you have't played the PC Version for yourself. As I had said earlier a couple of my friends live right down the street from eachother and tested the game out on eachothers servers. The host of the server will always have 0 ping on PC (unless its dedicated and then it may be 0 to 2 at max). So no latency issues at all very smooth. But for the person who joined his server hes got over 200 ping. He also lags just as if he really had 200 ping. So there is a big discrepency here from Xbox and PC. You'd have to try it yourself to really know what I mean by the BS lag. The lag that you had mentioned when joining an american servers is the lag that everyonen gets, regardless of how close or how far you are, unless you happen to be the lucky one being the host of the server as you'll then have 0 ping and no lag issues (unless your PC or internet svcks as you had stated). My point also is the victories that I had gained is with the type of lag you were mentioning on the American Server you played on. Almost unplayable at all.

At 60fps you will always latency of 16ms minimum - this isn't solely a factor of ping times but also due to latency between client frames and server frames running in their regular sequence. Even single player games have that latency, and it's often worse - much worse.

Check out this video interview with Carmack: http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/06/08/e3-2011-our-john-carmack-interview-covers-rage-the-pc-and-gamma-corrected-anti-aliasing/

He talks about how he measured latency in various mainstream titles using a 1200fps digital camera to time how long it takes between when you move your mouse and when the screen updates, getting figures at least 100ms and quite often more in SP games.

Please don't misrepresent any of this as me arguing that latency is somehow a good thing or that latency problems should not be tackled. I'm not saying any of that, and I almost can't believe that I find it necessary to point this out.

@.9gw r.i.p:
I play lots of different games on Xbox live on US servers and i never had this lag before. Most other games work quite well.
The lag i got with Doom3 BFG from one game to the next was way out of the ordinary. That's why i keep repeating: it's a bug, it's a bug....

@Jimmy Shelter: i've seen this video before and as you know, latency is a common problem that get's worse with the amount of processor threads/processors used.
If my memory doesn't play tricks on me, Quake III already had player movement prediction built in to compensate the lag up to a certain point.
I've never programmed any multiplayer games but i assume, player movement prediction gets more and more difficult with the latency that comes with multiprocessor programming.
Additionally, even "modern" tv sets add some latency with their digital quality "enhancements".
Something that wasn't there with the old electron tube...