The Sins of Server Browsing

While all people have particular buttons to be pushed and peeves to jeer at, the wide range of gaming indignities I suffer and overcome become insufferable and unconquerable when such issues relate to the user interface. Yes, I am indeed martyring myself over menus. I realize there are far greater issues in the world to get worked up about, but since I'm a white male living fat and free off the backs of third-world economies--my every creature-comfort satisfied several times over--it's these little things that become big things and get my knickers in a twist.

This comes through my obsession with being Le Helicopteur Pilot Par Excellence in Battlefield 2. I generally avoid maps which have only transport choppers, favor ones with multiple helipad spawn points and stay away from those which have greater than 40 players--this last factor having nothing to do with my preferred vehicle and more to do with my machine dropping packets like its marking a trail through the Amazon and then crashing rather spectacularly. Thus, like many online gaming aficionados, I'm picky about my choice of server; a task which is exceedingly difficult in Battlefield 2's face-punchingly awful in-game server browser.

It's as though Dice's UI team never thought their game might inspire more than a few dozen servers across the whole of the planet. On a similar note, I'm wondering if that whole blogging thing will ever catch on. Aye, the list has a convenient scroll-bar, placed where one would expect, but there are such a great many servers and the number of servers visible is such a tiny subset that dragging the scroll handle pulls the list too far to keep track of. This probably relates more to the insidious latency of the interface, wherein one must wait a beat or four before the list responds to the pulling of the handle or the click of the scroll-bar's arrows... I'm finding this difficult to express in prose, so as a simile, let's just say that scrolling through the server list is rather like using your OS while having multiple, full-flash web pages open, processing gigabyte-sized images in Photoshop and having multiple torrents running in the background. I'm already a victim of forced intimacy with lag in-game, I'd rather not have it mar something as basic as my server list. This, of course, is the regular functioning of the BF2 in-game server list. It's irregular functioning involves clicking on a server and then waiting about 10-15 seconds before the selection is highlighted. Not the best way to let me "Challenge Everything."

I've undoubtedly crossed the threshold, but I'm not done yet. Why, in the name of all that is holy do in-game server lists still not have a "busy-redial" feature? It's such a basic notion that it seems carnal to not include it. The concept has been available as inspiration to developers since the QuakeSpy days. A sin worsened in BF2 as clicking "join" on a server that has decided to fill up in the last .5 seconds since the list was updated not only deselects the server that was just tried and apparently re-pings it which often moves it to somewhere else on the list, but it resets the mouse pointer to the center of the screen, brings up a "server is full" dialog box that must be closed with the mouse, and restarts the background music as well. I've now heard the opening bar of the BF2 menu-theme so many times that I actually shot a .44 caliber through my face just to get it to stop. I found myself resorting to treating it like some sort of mini-game in order to avoid causing myself further psychological trauma. I've now become a ninja of sorts in my unflinching accuracy at moving the mouse from it's reset, middle-screen position to where the "ok" of the "server is full" dialog box will appear. Carpal Tunnel be damned!

Applicable to all PC games everywhere--though I'm giving BF2 the ol' stink-eye: why lock the resolution of my menus? Is there any reason I shouldn't be able to change my resolution to 1600x1200 while binding keys and browsing server lists but then jump to a different resolution once actually launching the game engine? At least Tribes 2 lets the user operate the pre-game menus at the same resolution as in-game. Also, Tribes 2's filters actually work. Also, Tribes 2's server list (even in it's heydey) updated in like 2 seconds, displayed the number of users in-game accurately, and, oh yeah, didn't mysteriously remove the ability of the "Enter" key to function as expected for dialogs and server selection or have dozens of servers with pings of "0" and "9999."

In this era of technological wonders and marvelous miracles of medical science, are we still not able to make a scroll-bar function adequately? How long have we had scroll-bars? I'll bet it's been a while now. A good, long while.

I shall close with one, hyphenated word that should forever keep those who had a hand in BF2 in fear of their mortal souls: Buddy-Lists.

Sinners.

Comments

[Foopy]

I completely agree. BF2 is one of the most distinctive examples of this kind of thing, I think, because the game itself--visuals, audio, game mechanics, etc--is so highly polished, but everything surrounding it is utter crap, so much so that it's spoiled some of my experiences. It's a bizarre combination of awesome, deep gameplay and horrible, pathetic user interface design.

When I only have 30 minutes to play, it takes so long to find a decent server and connect to it that I barely have time to actually play the game, and other times I'm so fed up with searching for servers that I don't feel like playing anymore by the time I finally get into one. A friend of mine wouldn't even buy the game because of these problems.

Hopefully they've fixed some of this in the recent patches, though; I haven't had a chance to try them out yet.

[brit]

hi my name is brittney and im 15, one day i was playin tony hawk and when grinding the rail it viabarated and it felt good so i put it on purfect rail and took off my pants and thong and start masterbating and had multiple orgasmis, has anyone here done the smae or has thought about it? please respond

[bowler]

/standing ovation

That was an inspired rant, my friend. I'm laughing my ass off over here. Shot your face off. I've got to use that one.

But yeah, the patch helped a bit. So did my building a faster machine to play it. I recall before building the new machine (and patching) trying for the better part of an HOUR attempting to join just one ranked game.

I just want to know one thing: How did they go from the best demo of all time to the very worst launch of all time (MMO games nonwithstanding)? JEBUS.

[matt]

i'm still trying to decide if they just threw in the server list in the last minute or if it was just poorly implimented to begin with. you'd think internal testing would reveal many of the issues, but i suppose it could be a question of priority.

i keep hoping that developers will pick up on using Steam as a distribution method. let me buy the game and download it, launch it from steam and have easy access to all my buddies and be able to follow them to whatever server they happen to be on. incorporate clan/team support--particularly important for a game like BF2--and goodnight sally. but, i think valve screwed themselves on that deal for a good long while with a poor launch of their very own. like ya said: JEBUS.

[Tony Walsh]

The BF1942 in-game browser was pretty bad, but the BF2 browser takes the cake. And that cake is clearly made from poop.

I don't know if the All Seeing Eye meta-browser is set up for BF2 yet, but it's worth checking out as an alternative to the in-game browser. It was a big help with BF1942 at the time.

[NeoApocalypse]

Yeah, I've pointed this out several times and me and the UI guy at work here have had a few good chortles over the BF2 server browser.

1. Add a checkbox for autobalance filtering. No way am I getting on a non-autobalanced server. I've been spawn-killed at my one base by a team twice the size of my own enough times by now, thanks.

2. Add ability to add people to a buddy-list. Highlight servers my buddies are on.

3. For that matter, add ability to add people to a hated-enemy-list. There are a large number of wang-tards out there who enjoy teamkilling, even though it's punished. If I could put these people on a list and filter the server list to only servers that don't have these people on it, that'd be a godsend.

4. Regularly (like once every tenth of a second) update the number of players on the selected server.

5. Fix the inconsistencies of the UI. For the love of Mike, why in this day and age can't I use the scroll wheel on the server browser? What's with all the 0 and 9999 ping servers? Why is it that even though I select to filter by only non-full populated servers, do I still see dozens of full servers in the list? Are they filling up in the 1/2 second between my 'refresh' button click and the actual refresh? If that's the case, then allow me to only who servers that aren't close to filling, like a filter that allows you to only display servers that have at least X number of open slots.
I wonder how far the Gamespy thing extends into this product. Is it DICE's doing or Gamespy's for the UI?

[minc]

oh man, i forgot about the scroll wheel in my rant. i automagically use my scroll wheel whenever i see a scroll bar and having the functionality suddenly disappear when in the server list of BF2 is recockulous. that's just so 1999. the scroll wheel is the greatest UI advancement since the original concept of the GUI and anyone who doesn't immediately include it's functionality in anything requiring the user to scroll should be drug out into the street and forced into a repetitive-stress injury.

and, yes, i believe the filters in BF2 are mostly for show.

[ott]

Quit whining! As for buddy-lists, that's what the Gamespy arcade is suppose to do for you. I'll bet most of you skipped the Gamespy arcade installation.

I've been playing slightly over a month and have logged over 500 games. I have no problems finding a server nor bitching at the server browser being broken. I know it's broken. It's very easy to use the filter and find my fav servers. Learn that and you'll be fine.

[thb]

GameSpy Arcade may have a buddy list, but it does not support BF2 server browsing, so what's the use?

And currently, BF2 does not allow passing the server name and port on the command line, so you can't just use any other server browser instead. Well, at least not unless you're willing to put up with a whole lot of crap like entering a fake global server name manually each time you try to connect to a server ;-)

Add to that the dearth of low-ping ranked servers due to the fact that EA allows those only when they're run by some obscure providers, and I'm pretty dissatisfied.

[Hepcat]

Just a note on the above comment:

BF2 does allow the use of external Game Server browsers, like The All Seeing Eye, and it works fully to log you onto the server via the BF2 command line.

In other words, I just used tASE to select and log onto a BF2 server. BF2 has had this working since the first patch.

[outsider]

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[Allan]

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