I agree. It was fun playing with you and the other guys last night because everyone was cool. I tried playing a few ranked matches earlier in the day and constantly found myself surrounded by obnoxious assholes save for one guy.

And to answer Prime's question, I think GOW was made for 8. I'm sure they could have kept the same quality graphics and had 16 people, but that would go against the nature of the game. It's susposed to be stealthy and enforce teamwork. If there were 16 people, I'm sure most games would just have everyone killing each other without ever sneaking and working together.

Personally I like the 4 on 4 setup as it makes you work as a team to be successful.

Many times I tried to play the game like halo but it simply doesn't work that way. We would use flank tactics, triangle setups, sacrificial setups. It can get pretty damn deep. It's even possible for one guy to kill a whole team on his own if he's ninja enough

I love it!

Dudes, it's absolutely nothing to do with the (local) 360 hardware. Crappy pcs have been doing larger scale multiplayer gaming for years. It's purely due to Microsofts decision to use peer to peer for nearly all xbox live games. I mean, there's still a central server for matchups, stats etc. but the actual game itself runs peer to peer. PC games like Diablo and Warcraft use p2p also, but I would say nearly all PC FPS have been server based, since Quake 1. The exceptions on 360 of course would be FFXI, and PSU, although even PSU might mostly go p2p for the instances.

I can only imagine that MS is doing this from a budget perspective, but when you're actually paying money to use xbox live, the fact that they don't even supply dedicated servers for fps is truely poor. PC game companies will either host their own, or allow isps to host, and you don't pay a cent.

While GOW might definitely be more suited to a lower player cap from a gameplay perspective, it would still annoy me that I'm not getting the best experience I could, because MS is refusing to supply dedicated servers. And the obvious comparison is Resistance. Resistance can do 40 player games, not because of the power of the ps3 (yeah right), but because Sony will be hosting dedicated servers for the game. Simple as that.

Anyway people should be letting MS know that it's unacceptable to be paying $50 and not getting this kind of service. I haven't got a 360 yet, but when I do, I don't want all my multiplayer gaming dumbed down to 8-12 players (along with the associated lag).

Call of Duty 3 is 24 player, and the graphics are almost on par with GoW. As many others have said, it was a gameplay choice, and a smart one at that.

Resistance might be able to do a 40 player game, but I don't think that would be fun at all.

Tell that to fans of the Battlefield series (pc obviously).

Anyway, I obviously haven't played 24 player cod3, but a dedicated server is always going to beat out p2p for low latency gaming. Anyone who denies this is a fool.

I would love to work more with a team and I don't mind being the guy who sacrfices himself to get the other team to expose themselves. Anyway, GOW has really made me rethink my general fear of team games. I mean in the past team games in HALO II and GRAW with strangers has been ok for me but being on a team with dvdtalkers is just the best thing.

If you guys can just be patient with me as I play catch up that would be great.

Battlefield is a very popular and well-made game, I'm just bored of deathmatch gaming at this point. GoW is refreshing in how it rewards strategy and teamwork, as opposed to just getting the best weapon and ripping everyone else to shreds by standing near their spawn points.

I hear what your saying regarding preference for different game types and strategies. I guess the the points I would like for everyone to keep in mind is, and in particular to answer the original posters question regarding his 360 fears:

- The 360 is more than powerful enough to handle fps games with 40+ players
- Most 360 games currently run p2p, Resistance however will use dedicated servers, thus the higher than normal player cap. Nothing to do with the *cough cough* power of the ps3.
- Even a game like GOW, with relatively low player counts, would benefit somewhat from a dedicated server environment with a 1st class connection.

And I agree with all of those points.

I played about 5 rounds with complete strangers and I have to say the experience was less than stellar.