XBox Live - bored to tears.

[Lebowski]

mabey they have sorted it out since, i havent touched it for weeks got it when it first cameout it was so anoying that you were playing a match someone would join and it would just lag like crazy makeing it unplayable. im glad your enjoying it but my first experiences on it wernt that favorable which put me off it for good.

[Baroque]

Baroque what are you talking about? I take it you don't actually own xbox live cos your experience is waaaay different to mine.

Making assumptions is a very dangerous thing, it leads people to jump to conclusions which are usually wrong. I'm not in the habit of commenting on things I don't have experiance with, indeed I got in DSL for Live but now use that connection solely for the net.

I haven't got to bed before 3am in the last 5 nights because i've been too addicted to MM3 and wolfenstein.

Well good for you, I usually don't get to bed every night until that time as I'm usually up working or reading. I played an awful lot of online games in the 90?s and found it?s like eating a ten pound bag of sugar. You get so far into it and then you can?t even bring yourself to look at it ever again.

Every other game I have has been put on hold because of the addictive grasp of online. I have had no difficulty finding good games of Wolfie. As soon as I find a solid/good server I just addthem to my friends list. I'm now pretty much guaranteed a good game every time I go online now.

Which is great for you, it's just that 90% of the rest of the console market couldn't give a damn about online gaming. The sales figures show that there are less than 10 of the large online games which turn a profit at all. In many cases publishers are now demanding that developers include extensive single player aspects to some of the more hyped online only games, as they rightly fear they won?t sell at retail.

I find it totally revolutionary to be honest. 16 player team games with voice support on a console. In dolby digital 5.1, on a 36" tv. Certainly not the experience I had with any of the last generation of consoles.

Nothing which we hadn't seen on PC's already, the hardware just reached a level where it can push around that amount of data, what it's doing with it isn't all that different. Multiplayer isn't that hard to do, if you have enough processing power, the same goes for sound, graphics & voice over IP.

The move to 3D was a revolution, the fact that games gave you this large and now interactive gamespace to play in was a very big deal, the idea of multi-player being some form of revolution when it goes back to co-operative play in DOOM II and the like is just ludicrous. Multi-player as a concept has been around since you could buy a second controller and have another player play the same game with you in some fashion, back in the NES days. If the online thing is a big deal, (I don't think it is) then it's a big deal because Sega did it first. PSO and Chu Chu Rocket moved the console world, not the XBox version of RTCW.

XBox Live hasn't been the experience many people believed they were signing up for and when the renewals come up they'll be a visible attrition rate which will reflect that.

[Roost]

Well good for you, I usually don't get to bed every night until that time as I'm usually up working or reading. I played an awful lot of online games in the 90?s and found it?s like eating a ten pound bag of sugar. You get so far into it and then you can?t even bring yourself to look at it ever again.

That is so very true i couldn't even consider buying PSO on GC or Xb now as the amount of hours i spent on the DC version really does scare me. Its the same with Moto GP i was starting to get bored of it then Moto 2 came out within a week i couldn't stand no.2 anymore as there seemed so little change.

[Shez]

An important factor for me is who you are playing against.

I'm involved in a small, but thriving community, and we have a great laugh on live. Agreed some of the games are a bit lacking at the moment, but when you are playing against a good bunch of people, the fun is definitely magnified.

I expect the next generation of consoles to offer online material that far exceeds what we have seen so far.

[mid]

mabey they have sorted it out since, i havent touched it for weeks got it when it first cameout it was so anoying that you were playing a match someone would join and it would just lag like crazy makeing it unplayable.

I take it you're talking about Midtown 3 here? Its the only game I know you can join mid-round.

Yes, your machine appears to not so much lag as lock up completely for about a second when someone connects. I assume its actually doing some sort of handshake, caching the car info and stuff. Once its done that, though, it seems fine again. Its nothing major, and since it happens to everyone its reasonably fair.

[Roost]

An important factor for me is who you are playing against.

I'm involved in a small, but thriving community, and we have a great laugh on live. Agreed some of the games are a bit lacking at the moment, but when you are playing against a good bunch of people, the fun is definitely magnified.

I expect the next generation of consoles to offer online material that far exceeds what we have seen so far.

Yup same here, i'm in a little group that started off just having league racing on Moto 1, since then we've gone onto Moto 2, Wolfie, CvsSnk and Midtown Madness.

Only doing a league on Wolfie at the min. 4 v 4 matches, really encourages team play

[srgbilco]

Nothing which we hadn't seen on PC's already, the hardware just reached a level where it can push around that amount of data, what it's doing with it isn't all that different. Multiplayer isn't that hard to do, if you have enough processing power, the same goes for sound, graphics & voice over IP.

The move to 3D was a revolution, the fact that games gave you this large and now interactive gamespace to play in was a very big deal, the idea of multi-player being some form of revolution when it goes back to co-operative play in DOOM II and the like is just ludicrous. Multi-player as a concept has been around since you could buy a second controller and have another player play the same game with you in some fashion, back in the NES days. If the online thing is a big deal, (I don't think it is) then it's a big deal because Sega did it first. PSO and Chu Chu Rocket moved the console world, not the XBox version of RTCW.

XBox Live hasn't been the experience many people believed they were signing up for and when the renewals come up they'll be a visible attrition rate which will reflect that.

I find it a bit hypocritical to claim that the current online services for consoles are hardly revolutionary as their ilk has already been seen on PC, yet also claiming the transition from 2D to 3D games on consoles were revolutionary, ignoring the fact that 3D games had already been seen on PC a few years before the advent of 3D games on consoles.

I agree, from the reports I've heard, that Live! is a farce, especially considering the lack of dedicated servers, something that the annual subscription fee was supposed to pay for. It's just that it is pretty revolutionary for people who haven't played PC games online and haven't seen that they're essentially paying for cut-down versions of old PC games, on top of an annual subscription fee.

[Kerraig UK]

what exactly is cut down about them? I played wolfenstein and unreal tournament on PC and I find the xbox versions superior noot cut down.

[srgbilco]

what exactly is cut down about them? I played wolfenstein and unreal tournament on PC and I find the xbox versions superior noot cut down.

I mainly meant that they can't be modded or anything and also that they were intended to be played using a mouse and keyboard. But I don't want to open up that can of worms.

[Valken]

I really enjoy RTCW on the Xbox but it IS cut down compared to the PC version. Even a 4 year old PC will run the PC game at twice the frame rate and twice the resolution of the XBo version and the PC game's menus are much easier to use than the Xbox abominations.

The thing that makes it great is that voice chat REALLY adds to teamplay modes.

I'm a bit disappointed though... I added a couple of NTSC UK people to my buddy lists and according to their stats they've played the game maybe 5 times overall and not at all in the past two months.

I never see their names "online" when I'm playing Live games at all actually.

[H-Man]

Live doesn't seem to offer much to a pc owner who already plays online.

RTCW is great, and i'm glad many of you guys seem to love it - but i've been playing it every night for the last 2 years and want something 'new'. The lack of dedicated servers also worries me greatly

I know Live has a friends lists and voice comms ...... but this isn't really new either (been playing Wolf with voice comms for yonks, CS has had it for aaaaages)

Live needs some decent Xbox exclusives pretty quick. (Personally i'm waiting for Halo2 ....... better have dedicated servers tho - 4 vs. 4 will get boring very quickly)

[Kerraig UK]

Wolfenstein has dedicated servers. And they're not hard to find. Do you guys actually use optimatch?

As for the voice on PC. I've got roger wilco and it is good. But how many games have you played where your entire team has voice? thats the difference.

[mid]

At the risk of muddying the waters even futher, how do other feel about the free RTCW multiplayer thing on the PC? I tried it briefly, and didn't have a real clue what I was doing - unlike CS etc, telling friend from foe was a nightmare.

[H-Man]

I only play with my clan and friends - so both teams always use voice coms ...... plus the games are structured scrims or league matches (which I personally prefer - and something Live lacks right now)

See where your coming from tho - Live has these things as standard .. which is great

[El Geet]

For what it's worth, for me XBL gave the first headache and, if you're lucky, yank free experience of online gaming! I don't think it can be stressed enough what a different experience it is to play with people you 'know' and being able to exclude the annoying little 12 year old Jim Bob from Arkansas who likes to go round the track backwards or can't get over the fact that there are people in the world who don't come from Arkansas.

Those of you expecting a difference as striking as the jump from 2D to 3D are asking a bit much. I agree that XBL isn't quite revolutionary but the potential is most definitley there. I'm not massively into racers but MotoGP had me hooked for a while...only a while though.