Suggestion for furture updates to the Geo-Filter

[SouthernGypsy]

I have a suggestion for future updates to how you draw out, modify your Geo-Fencing on the Geo-Filter map page...

It would be nice if in the Geo-Filter if you not only could draw out your approved area but also be able to easily mark an area within it as denied. Sometimes it's hard to make a decent sized area so you can find games easily without including some unwanted server locations. Right now you can add a second area (if you have enough points left) to allow outside of your main area, but there is no way to deny areas within your created fenced area. True you can deny a server within the area but that can be hard, some servers for games have numerous different server addresses at a location and you'd have to deny each one individually which is annoying and could take weeks. It would be much easier if you could simply mark an area as denied or when you find the first server in an unwanted location be able to click on it and select something like "and deny all servers near this location" or within a radius, etc.

Because of the current limitation here is what my current Geo-Filter map looks like, then the second image shows WHY it is that I have it laid out this way. I'm located in North-Central Arkansas and the best server for me is always Dallas, Texas.  My ping times to Dallas is usually in the 14-17 range but the next best location in Macon, Georgia is in the upper 30's or low 40's, and the others go up from there. So the reason I have the little diamonds of UN-allowed places is so I can still have a nice large area so finding matches is easy, yet dis-allow the servers in Macon Georgia - St. Louis, Missouri - Columbus, Ohio and Chicago, Illinois. And some kind of company in Wichita, Kansas that monitors the CoD servers and tracks users from the best I can tell by looking up their DNS info online. I also drew it with some strange points to allow the Xbox servers in Buffalo, New York - Warrenton, Virginia - and Des Moines, Iowa. There is also an important Xbox server in Seattle, Washington but I just added that to my allowed server list. Actually I have all of these four Xbox servers in my allowed list but in case they have more than one drew my borders to include as many as I could.

 

Just FYI for anyone who has problems getting an Open NAT, or gets the error "Can't get a Teredo IP Address" or "Can't Determine NAT" on the Xbox when trying to test the NAT.

If you will locate and add those four servers to your allowed list you will always get an Open NAT, or at least myself and several others I have given this suggestion to this has fixed their NAT issues, provided they also had their UPnP turned on. But UPnP doesn't seem to be enough, the Xbox needs to be able to reach these four servers to quickly/reliably get an Open NAT every time... The one in Buffalo seems to be the most important for getting an Open NAT (at least for people in my region of the US) but all four are important. In order of Importance for an open NAT they seem to be; 1. Buffalo, 2. Seattle, 3. Des Moines, 4. Warrenton. If you load your Geo-Filter and turn off "Auto-Ping Host", then go into Xbox network settings and run the tests one by one (Test Multiplayer, Test NAT, Test Network Speed) and as you run them you will see these servers light up, allowing you to click on them (why you need the auto-ping turned off) making them pop up in the lower right window and then you can give them unique names and save them as Allowed servers. You may even have to run a couple of the test more than once but eventually all of these will light up. One note about the NY server, there is both a Server AND some kind of Peer that shows up in Buffalo, you only want to allow the one that is a Server. I named mine simply "Xbox Server 01 - NY, Xbox Server 02 - WA, Xbox Server 03 - IA, and Xbox Server 04 - VA" After doing this I have never had the Can't get a Teredo IP Address error or Can't Determine NAT error again and always get an instant OPEN Nat.

 

Anyway, back to the Map; I ALWAYS want my server to be the Dallas, Texas one so that is in my fenced in zone, but then to get in lobbies easily I choose a large chunk of the country that I know has decent ping times to their major cities so I go as far west as Denver, Colorado, I go down into Florida far enough to get Orlando but not any further south as the south Florida area seems to have bad ping when connecting from my area, I stay away from the towns right on the eastern seaboard because all those islands seem to have hit-and-miss latency. Then I pickup the Warrenton Xbox server and up to the Buffalo server, then over and pick up the twin cities in Wisconsin but not going to high north as the latency in the far NE seems to get spotty, and then angle back down to finish back at the upper edge of Colorado where I started drawning. Along the way making my little diamonds which excludes all the CoD servers in those locations leaving the ONLY server within my allowed area the Dallas server. Just a note that all of the servers and peers that show up on the Geo-Filter page for the United States are slightly out of postion, they usually appear a bit lower and slightly to the east of where they actually are. The one in Southern Miami, Florida is a good example... if you look at the map it appers to be out in the ocean or the Florida Keys but it's actually listed as being in Kendal, Florida which is a town/suburb just south of Miami that has a technology based industrial area on the outskirts (right where one might expect to find a server farm).

It would be sooo much easier if I could just draw the outline and then go back and draw an exclusion spot or circle where needed or be able to click on a server that shows up inside of your allowed zone and instead of just Denying that server, be able to tell it to Deny ALL servers at that location or within a 10 mile radius, etc.  Also, to the designers, it would also be so much easier if when drawing out your Geo-fence you could back up to remove a mistake without having to completely start over, right now if you realize you made a mistake, you can't just erase the last segment of line back to the previous point because it instantly deletes everything and you have to start all over again from scratch.

 

OK, That's my suggestion for future updates and I know it's a little long but hope I explained it well enough for the engineers to follow.

 

[Netduma Fraser]

Thanks for the suggestion, I will add it to the list, can't promise it'll be done though