Gears of War 2 Matchmaking Problems Persist

There's no denying that Gears of War 2 has excellent multiplayer -- if only we could get to it. Despite last week's release of a patch to improve wait times for online play, the complaints are still rolling in on Epic's forums, and we're having difficulties as well.

[Viewtiful]

Gears 2 is a PoS. Completely overrated even when it DOES work.

[dannyhinote_13]

Completely wrong.
There are some glitches with need to be fixed, but the multiplayer is enthralling.

[Maxned]

Give me a break. You dont own the game. Even if you did, then ou obviously havent played Horde to its full potential/beaten the co-op campaign.
Then again, you need friends for both of those so that may be a problem for you.

[Man_of_the_year]

OPEN ZONE is that a way ---->

especially for a guy who doesn't own a 360 and has never played the game.

[wanderofys]

2.1:

People are becoming more and more tolerant of games being released unfinished and not working correctly.

I can't figure out why.

Don't buy games that don't work correctly and this will stop happening.

[KARMA2009]

and they pay $50 for each year for this.SAD

[Sayai jin]

@KARMA2009- It's not XBL that is causing the problem, it is something with the encoding in the game. Who's they?

[DARK WITNESS]

@wanderofys

totally agree. at first i thought it was just the oline and live, then i got to play gears at a Lan tourney and guess what.... even on lan it had the same issues and glitches, then i knew the problem was the network code itself not live or anything else. at that point i stopped playing gears online. to be honest i didn't think they would fix gears 2 and i was right.

whats said is that we should all make a stand and not put up with this crap.... but for everygamer who complains and says these are the problems with this game, you have another gamer who tells you they are being noobs by complaining and just stop moaning and play something else.

what i have noticed about gears 2 is that the people who seem to love are those who could not play the first one so well online or those who could not handle a shotgun fight, now the shotgun is useless they love it. while those who used the shotgun the most in gears 1 seem to have the biggist problem with gears 2.

personally i don't like a lot of things about gears 2... and i could go on and on about what i think its wrong with it, but i simply wont play it.

i don't care how good people say hord is, for me personally the game is a failure, its as big a letdown as halo 3 and 2 were after playing halo 1.

anyway i have moved on. gears 1 was great... untill they started f$T%king it up with updates and it went downhill from there....gears 2 is... well the second part to that > still going down hill.

back to dead space. on my 3rd play through, not even bothered finishing gears 2 yet.

[ihaten4glol]

I really don't care too much for Gears 2, either. I enjoyed the first game and this was more of the same, but there's only so much praise that can be lauded upon the franchise no matter how fun it is to use a Lancer to rip heads off. This broken multiplayer business is turning me off ever using it.

[IaMs12]

You have got to give it time. From what i have heard, cuz i didnt play Halo 3 when it first came out, had the same problems with the matchmaking. Its new, you have to give it time to find the glitchs then fix them. its been out a month exactly now? give them time to find the problems and fix it, from what i recall from playing Gears 2 the other day i found a Horde game in no time at all

[callahan09]

Halo 3 worked great for me when it first came out. Gears 1 had awful issues. I couldn't get into a match to save my life and when I could the slowdown was unbearable and unplayable. I've had the same issues with Gears 2. It took about 2 months before Gears 1 worked for me. Once it worked, though, I became very addicted. I don't know why Epic hasn't been able to get the networking code right, straight out of the gates, but whatever.

[caladbolg777]

Gears II = Socom Confrontation?

[dragonslayer91]

The reason for the matchmaking issue is that everybody is returning or has sold the game. Check the bargain bin at Biglots. I saw a bunch of Gears 2, the disks were all scratched though, like average 360 games. Good luck.

[James Abels]

hopefully they can solve this, It suck's when its a big game like gears, I am also feeling the pain with LBP as the multi-player there still needs a bit of work :(

[Blademask]

Gears Matchmaking doesnt.

it takes 4 seconds to join a friends pod.

it takes 90 hours to matchmake.

1 game is touted to be the biggest and most badass game known to man, yet.. the online doesn't work.

One game got negative press for it. The other one, well.. is here with only 3 degrees of a story.

lol.

[MediaSpin360]

We tried to tell you Xbox Fanboys. The HDMI port, 1080p, HD, large storage, multi-cpus, etc and no one wanted to listen...

This is only going to get worse... Whats funny is that the XBox 360 is EASY to develop for so whats the problem?

All I know is regardless of platform the glitching in games is out of control.

[RedVsBlue]

The glitches are not the problem with this game. Even when & if the fix the current ones new ones will rise. The problem is the crappy matchmaking system & lobby. I'm all for the weapon changing but the matchmaking & lobbies & other multiplayer features did NOT need to be changed or taken out

[GWAVE]

And to think that people mocked Little Big Planet for a few days of server problems...

[callahan09]

From my personal experience, Gears 2's online sucks right now because of terrible waiting times getting into matches and awful lag and slowdown making the game unplayable during about half the matches I've entered. But if I'm being honest, I'm still having the exact same issues with LittleBigPlanet, as well. The only game that I bought this fall that didn't give me online connection issues is Resistance 2. It has actually worked! Since day one.

[- Ghost of Sparta -]

Why are 360 loyalists so obsessed with game sales? Sales do not equal quality. I've come to the conclusion that 360 fanboys are trying to ignore the fact that LBP outscored every exclusive on 360.

If game sales mattered more than quality, Lost Odyssey would be a better game than the best reviewed JRPG of this generation (Valkyria Chronicles) when in reality, it is by far one of the most mediocre JRPG's ever made.

[littletad]

Why are ps3 fanboys so obsessive period? Quantity doesn't equal quality now does it?

Does Gears 2 and LBP equal each other in terms of quality? No, but that doesn't mean that each game presents it's own share of quality and most of all fun. And if software numbers "seem" to matter more to 360 fanboys and hardware numbers more for ps3 fans, doesn't that make your comment hypocritical either way?

[- Ghost of Sparta -]

@ littletard: I wasn't talking about hardware sales. Maybe you should learn how to read before you label me as some kind of hypocrite.

[littletad]

How pathetic, surely you can show some decent respect can't you? Anyways, perhaps you have to be told how to understand my comment. It's rhetorical, in the sense that you complained 360 owners worry about sales. Fact is, if you look at past comments, most people on either side argue about software sales compared to hardware sales. So in a manner of speaking, you are hypocrite because Sony fans argue about sales just as much as a 360 fan might. There, hope that helps.

[L Ronald Hubbard]

I hope they don't fix it. /sarcasm

[Funky Town_TX]

I got Gears for Horde and single player. Horde online is very fun. The unbalanced weapons in the first Gears has kept me away from the multi-player all together. I wonder if you can just roll and stick grenade your self to victory.

[hamsterfist]

Thankfully others know what I have been complaining about. For some reason it is much easier to get matched for Horde mode then the other multiplayer modes. I find that it will match me up with my team and then it seems to freeze when trying to match us up against another team. I have pretty much given up on multiplayer on Gears 2. Which is a shame as this was one of my most looked forward to "experiences" this year, and because Epic totally effed the multiplayer up I hardly play it.

[caladbolg777]

In my roommate's opinion, Horde mode is all that matters. Does anyone else feel this way?

[sweetlewfor3]

I know, they ,matchmaking its ridiculous. I dont understand how when I play Resistance 2 with 60 people I find and get into a game right away, and when I play Gears, it lags with 5 on 5.

Why? I thought more people meant more lag?

[gamfreak]

BOTS.... Jump Out already....

[psiom]

Isn't it kinda weird that SOCOM got shafted on scores because of server issues, but not one single publication docked any Gears points for this matchmaking problem?

I'm not saying SOCOM is better than gears 2 - it was just one example. I've never even played SOCOM.

I don't really care for all conspiracy theories about console bias, but you could say that Gears 2 did get a bit of a golden-child treatment. It has enough polish and enough good points about it that serious issues did get ignored. It's a double standard, but what can ya do :)

/rant

Screw numeric reviews anyway, I say.

[hamsterfist]

I will totally agree with you here. Earlier today a KZ2 preview from 1up contained mentions of the game not being all that because of minor issues, such as the Helghast having red eyes, yet 1up or EGM made no mention of the HORRIBLE match making in the Gears 2 review. I am not sure if there is a 360 conspiracy or what, but it seems like the 360 titles are getting better treatment for sure.

[Xlll]

Cliffy was to busy with the 15 year old boys to worry about match making.

[- Ghost of Sparta -]

Lmfao.

[pshizle]

lol

[Microsoft Xbox 360]

Classic.

LOL

[user858621]

hahaahahahahaha!!!!!!

[SONYSLAVE]

you droids in another gears of war article

so sad.
I GUESS IT EATS AT YA THAT GEARS OF WAR 2 HAS SOLD UP TO 75% OF MGS 4 SALES BEING IT'S FIRST MONTH.

proof that most people bought the ps3 for bluray movies.

HAHAHAH!!!

[- Ghost of Sparta -]

^ Proof that 360 users are sad and retarded.

[tehReaper]

Almost every single comment above = Proof that PS3 fanboys are sad and retarded.

[pshizle]

was just as bad when it first came out

it takes time but should of been fixed out from day 1

[ECM0NEY]

SOCOM is only online. Gears has a singleplayer.

[psiom]

So what?

The multiplayer in Gears 2 is part of the package.

[OOG]

meh I duno...my matchmaking works fine....but I do also travel with a few friends....

Ive never really had any big networking issues with Gears since its first week.......and its eve better with the patch...for finding that 1 extra player when you have a team of 4 etc....so I duno...

[predator]

I love Gears 2 but the matchmaking is killing me

[Gun_Senshi]

"I pay for superior online and happy with it"

Now on a more seroius tone. Why do people support unfinished games when released and buy them to wait for a patch. I don't remember that stuff on PSX and PS2. It was on PC for long but older days PC patch was minor issues and free stuff not to finish an unfinished game. I'm talking in general now. We are paying FULL PRICE of UNFINISED GAMES!

[Magic_The_Celt]

LMFAO

Gears of War 2, utter failure

[slayerized]

i was a huge gears addict but after this bs i sold my copy.as for it being like socom at least you could play socom not wait 20mins to join a game.

[zethos56]

I'm finding a game faster than I was before, but that doesn't stop the ridiculous lag that happens in some games. And there's still host advantage! You'd think that they would be able to fix a game's lag issues over two years time when games like Resistance 2 and CoD: WaW are released with little to no lag.

[Thatlalala]

Sucks when you don't even get to play MP. That's the main reason I got Gears2, I feel like I'm owed half my money back.

[iggypop123]

epic is worse than infinity ward on supporting online games. why cant they fix this. is cliffy b taking pictures of himself or something. i already beat the game on insane i want to play online but not wait 20 min to find a game

[Lord Vader]

campaign = flawless.

horde = outstanding.

G2 mp = epic fail.

Laggy, awful matchmaking, arcade weapons, stupid MP modes without choices. Completely ruined the feel of the first game. Gears 1 MP is my favorite MP game of all-time. Gears 2 Mp absolutely sucks balls.