Does Modern Warfare 2 Finally Fix The PS3’s Invite System?
Modern Warfare shows us the way.Published 23/11/2009 at 8:31 by nofi
Sony’s PS3 interface, the XMB, has been steadily growing since its launch in 2006 - constantly evolving, not always in the right direction, but at least we’re getting a trickle feed of new features every few months. One thing we don’t properly have yet, though, is a universal cross-game invite system, the ability to invite your friends to a game regardless of what game they’re currently playing themselves. Sure, some games have it written into the software, but the system is neither univeral nor straightforward, especially compared with the slick, easy to use 360 alternative which works for every game straight out of the box because it’s part of the system.
But back to the PS3, and in particular Activision’s Modern Warfare 2, which does at least attempt to incorporate a decent invite system, which you can do from two directions. The first, an actual invite, is done by the host from within a game – I tried this when playing a bit of co-op with Michael the other day and it’s fine – not perfect, but it works pretty slickly and assuming your friend is watching the pop-up notifications you shouldn’t have any problem putting together a party. Where MW2 excels, though, is in the way you can use the PS3’s XMB to actually join a game, something of a first for PlayStation 3 owners looking to get into some online action.
There are two ways to do this: the first is to navigate to your friends name on the XMB, press Triangle and then select ‘Join Session’, and the second (and totally brand new to PS3) way is by selecting your Friend’s name on the XMB, bringing up their gamercard, and then at the bottom you will see five icons. The first one, which has a picture of a controller, is the ‘Modern Warfare 2 Menu’. By selecting this icon a smaller menu will come up with the option to ‘Join Session’ & ‘Invite to Game’. This is great, and the way it should be done, but it seems that these options are only available if you are currently playing Modern Warfare 2 as well.
This is actually a really cool feature, and one that personally I’d not seen before until reader AJ pointed it out to us. When most PS3 games are struggling to get themselves a decent invite system within the game that actually works 100% it appears that Sony have already done the hard work on the system’s XMB interface and it just needed a high profile game to show developers how it’s meant to be done. The multiple ways to get into a Friend’s game in Modern Warfare 2 show how simple such a service should be, and why it doesn’t have to all be done in customised code – the best, most efficient way is already in place. Other developers, take note.
Thanks, AJ.
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.
cc_star | 23/11/2009 08:35
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This works really well, but it’s odd how Uncharted2 doesn’t support it.
BlingOnMyWrist | 23/11/2009 20:30
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Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t Uncharted 2 games ‘locked’ when they are started? Like you can’t join a game in progress even from within the game by searching/matchmaking.
So, this feature wouldn’t work with the current state of the multiplayer Uncharted 2. I’m not sure if Naughty Dog intended it to be this way (not being able to join a game in progress) or if they just hadn’t thought of it… I suppose…
AcidCrashX | 23/11/2009 08:41
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Excellent. havent spend much time on Multiplayer yet so didnt know of this feature. its a interesting idea, seems to have been taken from the Resident Evil 5 invitation system but far improved.
hope more games take the design and implement it as cc_star mentioned.. Uncharted 2 should support this.
deadairspace | 23/11/2009 08:42
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Agreed works very well – completely flawless which is a nice change.
Doddsy | 23/11/2009 08:44
Totally Oscar Mike
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It works really nicely, but my friends and I keep getting disconnected from each other :/
3shirts | 23/11/2009 08:49
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I also like that the display of what your friend is doing is so much more detailed for MW2. For most titles it just tells you what game they are playing but if they are in MW2 it tells you what mode (multiplayer, single player or special ops), what game type (deathmatch, domination etc) and even what map! It is much better when you are looking to invite or join them cos you know if they are doing single player and probably don’t want to be disturbed or some multiplayer and wouldn’t mind.
g00nerz | 23/11/2009 09:02
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When it works its pretty smooth but on a few occassions me and a friend cannot join each others session for some reason. An invite comes thru but when you choose to join it comes up with “session no longer valid”.
The only way to solve it is for both of us to sign out of psn then back in.
I also don’t like the mics ‘going quiet’ when games are loading. it makes you wonder if you’ve been cut off.
Damigos | 23/11/2009 09:01
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Being so next gen, the PS3 should even have the ability to invite friends with voice commands..But, apart from that, its a pity that the system allover is a bit slow while checking other people’s profiles or inviting them.
BlingOnMyWrist | 23/11/2009 20:35
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Your idea sounds very next gen, and simple for the user until you have to pronounce your friend’s name. Could you imagine trying to say something like “xX_5N3AkY_l33t_GaYm3R_Xx”.
iAvernus | 27/11/2009 04:52
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LOL! Can you imagine remembering it!?
BrendanCalls | 23/11/2009 09:03
Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc - YOHIMBÉ!!!
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I have to agree with this, The invite system on MW2 is excellent and apart from the early teething problem, unrelated to IW of course, it has worked flawlessly for me. I particularly remember with COD4 and WaW that there were certain people on my friend’s list I could never connect to, and this issue seems to have been resolved, I have connected to everyone I have tried to without issue. My thanks and congrats to IW for this
BlingOnMyWrist | 23/11/2009 20:41
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And how the PS3 version of COD:WAW had “Privacy Options” with “Invite Only” & “Closed” as options while the 360 had the same along with “Open” & “Friends Only” which friends and players met to join your session.
I don’t even understand why they would add the option to the PS3 version…
C_S15 | 23/11/2009 09:04
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IW aren’t so bad, are they?
Deadpixel | 23/11/2009 09:10
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For some reason I really don’t understand UC2’s party / invite system. Also the matchmaking is very slow and sometimes it just doesn’t seem to work… Any news on expected improvement thru patching or so?
cc_star | 23/11/2009 10:22
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It’s had one
minerwilly | 23/11/2009 09:36
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I just stumbled across this last night by accident . It wasnt long before I was back on the Battlefield beta though . Its outstanding . I
mrmcq2u | 23/11/2009 10:09
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This is great news, much more useful than cross game chat for me anyway. I think they need to link this api with the home game launching api so that they could get a back catalog of games which would be compatible like warhawk for example.
Kevling | 23/11/2009 10:14
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I think Home game launching has almost been abandoned. Why bother when they can sell t-shirts?
An XMB party system would be more appreciated, at least by me
cc_star | 23/11/2009 10:24
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If it’s not on the XMB it doesn’t exist
mrmcq2u | 23/11/2009 11:05
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Yeah, but the point is that if there was a common api developers would automatically add support for both unintentionally by consciously supporting one.
So if Sony created a common api and infinity ward intentionally added support for xmb cross game invites a consequence would be that they would have also added support for home game launching.
This is modular design, most proper engineers use modular design to reduce costs because its a conscious effort to not have a redundancy in terms of multiple systems of achieving the same function.
The lower level stuff should be shared in terms of game launching and cross game invites and then the api would act as a layer so that you could have multiple ways on the ui for accessing said function(home,xmb).
Home does the same thing as xmb invites, only difference is its the home client handling the requests.
Warhawk and other multiplayer game launching games should have been retroactive with this if the engineers were any way decent at what they did.
mrmcq2u | 23/11/2009 11:25
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“If it’s not on the XMB it doesn’t exist” -> Not sure what you mean by this. The games themselves perform a handshake with the home client.
The games tell the home client that it is compatible with the game launching api. The api itself is just a specification for communicating with the client.
Both the client and game understand this specification and thus understand how to communicate requests and responses with each other.
There was nothing stopping sony from either
#1 making the xmb compatible with this spec and thus unlocking its functionality.
#2 migrating the spec to the xmb completely and removing it from home instead having one game launching backend handled by the xmb rather than two(xmb +home), thus reducing redundancy .
The thing is that for say warhawk, when you start a session in home you are just creating a lobby.
When people join a session in home they are just sending a request to join said lobby.
When you start the game it communicates the info gathered from the home cleint.
And psn keeps the session available within home until it ends, allowing others to join.
When you look past the ui of how this function is achieved and
look at the sub-functions its near identical to xmb cross game invites.
All sub-functions would bring some retroactive support and also ensure ease of development for games developers in the future.
Raen | 23/11/2009 11:31
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It was sarcasm. CC hates Home.
mrmcq2u | 23/11/2009 11:48
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Wouldn’t blame him.. The useful features of home have been neglected and the only reason to really be there is if you want to buy something.
Hopefully game launching compatibility picks up.
shrimpeh | 23/11/2009 10:40
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I really like the join session thing on MW2. Great if you load up the game only to find everyone already playing. It even puts you on the same team as your buddy if possible. Though I have to admit I’m not a huge fan of the invite system as if you’re trying to invite say 4 people it takes an age when compared to MW as you have to load up the friends list each time, find the invite button scroll down to send etc etc. I think an easy way to improve it would be have the cursor default to the send button when you click invite as who really wants to change the message that appears there.
Bilbo_bobbins | 23/11/2009 12:00
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I have to disagree, we have no problems at all with 6 of us meeting up. Doesn’t take long at all. If one person does the inviting, there isn’t a problem.
shrimpeh | 23/11/2009 13:03
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Wasn’t saying it took long but compared to MW where it was literally bish bash bosh it is positively hours.
BlingOnMyWrist | 23/11/2009 20:45
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If you use the actual XMB instead of using the Friends standalone list which the game links to, you can just hit triangle, select ‘Invite to Game’ (the first option) and click send, done, move to the next person. It should take about 4 seconds per person.
carlosfilippsen | 23/11/2009 11:02
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As said before, this works really well but I think uncharted 2 should support it aswell.
Klangaroo | 23/11/2009 11:13
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A few games do this already, MW2 is not the first at all.
mrmcq2u | 23/11/2009 12:43
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Yup it is, it offers interactive cross game invites not just an invite template for sending to friends.
shields_t | 23/11/2009 13:36
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I hadn’t noticed this but it does look sensible, the friends list bit on the XMB has always felt a little awkward to me, like not being able to send messages directly by clicking on the friend.
Certianly a step in the right directon, but I do wonder how many devs are going to adopt this given Sony’s “softly softly” approach to telling those producing PlayStation software what to do.