I know that some are annoyed with the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 and some are annoyed with the people who are annoyed. However, I think this is an interesting bit of info that helps to more accurately show what the latency bars are on the scoreboard. Sure it kind of states the obvious about peer-to-peer vs dedicated servers, but it's nice to see that instead of seeing a couple of bars that don't really help to explain your exact ping.

BASHandSlash

"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+.

Hosting Issues

Note that the maximum players you can host apparently depends on your upload speeds. From [3rdArmy]CW-4, who found this in a dvar dump (thanks Garetjax for the heads-up):

band_12players "384k"
band_18players "580k"
band_2players "64k"
band_4players "128k"
band_8players "256k"

The "580K" refers to the upload speed. Just FYI, most of you out there have 384k."

While it starts out talking about clans, don't think this is exclusive to clans. I play in the lowest ping servers that I can and I'm more of a casual player meaning I mainly just hop into pub games and have fun. The part about hosting is also stating the obvious, but giving you the exact info about it. I feel sad once more because I can hop into a 32 player Team Fortress 2 server and get a ping around 20-30ms. I just find it difficult to argue that matchmaking is going to be a huge advantage against dediacted servers.

Haha no host advantage my ass.

The thread on IW's forum is an interesting read, the ms difference between players is pretty substantial.  Although I hear they are improving it somewhat with the latest patch.

yes, and the sheep will have a "good" session thirty minutes later (probably when THEY are the host) so it's all fine for them.

Well...IW isn't paying for the servers so pay for a better internet connection.. :P

They still wouldn't be paying for them if they were dedicated either :P

I also question matchmaking for 'similarly skilled' players when I had the PS3 version rented (the day before the servers overloaded) when I'm playing in a match as a low level (level 5) and there are higher level players in the game (a number of level 20's to 30's). Heck, one game had a level 60 in it.

Host didn't seem to be doing to well in that game.

Was it a ranked playlist or an unranked playlist?  I have not played much CoD so I am not exactly sure what their matchmaking entails.  But there could also be rankings for specific playlists, as players could be better at capture the flag than deathmatch.

I am also beginning to wonder if the player base on the PC is large enough to properly handle a peer 2 peer matchmaking system.  It might have to be settling for sub-optimal hosts due to lack of options.