adding to this thread as i guess all MW2 discussion goes here now.
First of all, i'd like to say Shamus Young just wrote a great article about the issue of moving away from dedicated servers on PC, and the misconceptions many people have about it. It's a great article & worth a read.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/6768-Its-the-End-of-the-War-as-We-Know-It
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On to the news at hand; as Shamus points out in his article, on thing that can be done on PC is modifying the game (i dont mean mods as in maps, i mean changing how the game runs).
while it didn't take long for the hackers to make aim-bots & hitbox outlines (just search Modern Warfare 2 Hacks on youtube); what this is, is a legit modification for educational purposes only.
Via Bash And Slash, user SarahB has gotten to the nitty gritty of what the cell phone bars really mean & people are trying it out and seeing what's really going on. It's worth a read.
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http://bashandslash.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=795&Itemid=111
"In competitive gaming circles, having greater than 30ms difference between teams on a server was ruled an "unfair server", so it is interesting to read the truth about pings in the online MW2 experience.
The truth was supposed to be that the IW.net experience was going to be far superior than the one getting on dedicated servers. Far from it in my opinion. Now we have some numbers to back up that opinion.
SarahB on IW's official forums (source) has given us all a way to better monitor your online ping. Here is her technique:
Navigate to the folder: 'program files\steam\steamapps\common\call of duty modern warfare 2\players' and open the file config_mp.cfg
Change scoresping_interval from 100 to 20, and maxbars from 4 to 10 (10 is the max).
This means that each of the 10 bars represents 20ms, with full green being 20ms or lower, and 1 red being 200ms or higher.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE:*
WHAT HOST ADVANTAGE LOOKS LIKE:*
http://img52.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=hostadvantage1.jpg
The sad truth? You might wanna pound a few beers before you read this:
? The host is immediately obvious, he's the guy with 0-20 ping (full green).
? I usually connect with about 101-200+ms.
? Most people are connected at 200+ms (3 or less bars on normal cfg settings).
? On regular cfg settings, 4 bars means up to 0-100 ping, 3 bars 101-200, 2 bars 201-300, 1 bar is 301+."
*note: the ALL CAPS is from the article, i'm not trying to be outlandish.
