Thoughts on Xbox Live

[Paul_G]

Acert posted here about the good and bad parts of Xbox Live and suggested it might make an interesting new thread, something i agree with.

Btw, this would be a good new thread: How much have you played live and what has your experience been in regards to a) features and b) gaming performance. On the later, how does it perform in games with people in your general local geographical area, and outside. Finally, what would you alter and add?

So to start things off, i thought i'd give a rundown of my experience on Live and hopefully others can expand on it in areas i'm not familiar with.

History

I've been using Xbox live since mid 2003 when there was only really about 10 games out for the service. I cut my teeth on Moto GP 1 and 2 before moving onto PGR2 for way longer than perhaps i should have done (still play it today in fact) and i've dabbled with Halo 2, Rainbow 6, Splinter Cell and others. In Jan 06 I got a 360 and so far due to monetary constraints, have only got PGR3, which i've also played a fair amount.

In terms of services used, i've downloaded videos, demos and XBLA games; if and when the UK get TV and movie downloads, i may well try that too.

Xbox Live Features

In the thread linked to above, there was quite a lot of debate about what 360 has that PS3 lacks. While i don't want to get into another round of PS3 vs Xbox 360 on XYZ feature, I would like to echo the thoughts of some of the other Live users in that thread by saying that it really is the whole package that makes it worthwhile. I have absolutely no problem throwing down £40 a year to play online as much as i like. If you think about the time spent on the average game, which costs a similar amount, vs how much time you can spend online in a year, there really is no contest. One of the best things about Live is the consistency. Live really is built into the OS in every way, from downloading videos to changing your profile to chatting to people to looking at their gamerscore and achievements, it's all through a common interface. In addition to that, the layout is pretty logical and it took me very little time to get used to where everything is.

I should also mention under features the system of matchmaking and other gamers. It was wrongly suggested in the other thread that matchmaking is based on your gamerscore. While i don't work for MS or have any insider knowledge to prove my point, i can from experience tell you that a persons gamerscore does not seem to affect who you play. Certainly in the case of PGR3, besides the gamerscore, the game itself has a rank which is used to determine who you'll match up against. Also you can rate any player you come across in a number of ways. You can say you liked playing the person, or that you didn't, and in addition to that, why you did or did not. Was it because they were cheating or rude or maybe you did like it since it was a lot of fun. Based on this, the gamer in question is given a star rating out of 5. If you see a gamer has a star rating of 1 or 2, you may well decide to avoid them. Finally there are the gamer types. I am down as gaming for fun, casual. Some people are underground, others are family gamers. This is also taken into account and you are more likely to match up against someone in the same grouping than another.

Xbox Live Performance

Again, in the linked thread, Scooby mentioned that in his, admittedly limited experience, Xbox Live was very laggy. I don't know how things are in Canada, or the games he was playing, but my experience of playing, download speeds and voice chat are all exceptional. When I first started playing on Live back on Moto GP, there was a lot of issues with lag. Bikes would go straight through walls, or magically appear in front of you and knock you off. With PGR2, things were better but still some problems remained. With PGR3, the latest game i've played online, lag really hasn't been an issue. Occasionally collision detection can be a little off, and you might touch someone when you were actually 5ft off their bumper, but generally, lag is non-existant. This applies both to games played with others in England or Europe, and the rest of the world. Australia can be a bit difficult sometimes, but generally the US is no problem. Approximately 70% of my games will have at least one person from the US in too, so it's not like i've not experienced it much, it is consistently excellent. Outside of games, downloads are very good too, especially since i'd imagine unlike in games, where your host may well be relatively local, the storage of demos and XBLA games is almost certainly in the US, and still i get excellent speeds, I've managed a several hundred MB demo download in about an hour, which on my connection is pretty reasonable.

What would I change in Live?

Others have mentioned in various threads recently that Xbox Live was lacking several features now missed from the PS3, and i without comparing the two, i would like to say that those features are invaluable, and have really enhanced the service. I previously had to leave a download going overnight (meaning only one download per day effectively) and i wasn't too impressed. When background and multiple downloads game along, i found i downloaded a lot more and tried more new things. One thing i would like to see as a minor change is the order in which things download. Say i find a demo i want and it's 1GB. I would start the download and continue to browse. After that i find a new Red Vs. Blue episode is out, so i download that. I might want to watch that episode now, but i either have to cancel the demo or wait for it to finish first. If they were to either allow multiple simultaneous downloads, or a re-ordering tool to change download priority, i'd be very happy. One other small change i'd like to see subscribing, RSS style, to a series of files. For instance racing games, or action games, or Red Vs. Blue episodes. That sort of thing would be really useful to me because i often boot straight into a game without checking what is new. Even if there was just an alert saying a new game demo in racing games was available, that would be nice.



In conclusion, I would rate my experiences with Xbox Live as very positive. Any problems i've encountered have been a long time ago, and the service goes from strength to strength.

I'd be interested to hear from gamers who have more of the recent games, since i don't play online as much as i used to, and don't have GEoW or anything recent to see.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

When background and multiple downloads game along, i found i downloaded a lot more and tried more new things. One thing i would like to see as a minor change is the order in which things download. Say i find a demo i want and it's 1GB. I would start the download and continue to browse. After that i find a new Red Vs. Blue episode is out, so i download that. I might want to watch that episode now, but i either have to cancel the demo or wait for it to finish first. If they were to either allow multiple simultaneous downloads, or a re-ordering tool to change download priority, i'd be very happy.

Um, you can change the order of the download. Just click on the file you want to download and say "download now" the other download will stop and then continue from where it paused.

One other small change i'd like to see subscribing, RSS style, to a series of files. For instance racing games, or action games, or Red Vs. Blue episodes. That sort of thing would be really useful to me because i often boot straight into a game without checking what is new. Even if there was just an alert saying a new game demo in racing games was available, that would be nice.

Its allready been implemented in XBLA, probably will be implemented later for the entire thing.

 

[Paul_G]

Um, you can change the order of the download. Just click on the file you want to download and say "download now" the other download will stop and then continue from where it paused.

Ah, that's great! But you can't change the order can you? so the second and third downloads swap?

Its allready been implemented in XBLA, probably will be implemented later for the entire thing.

There you go, Xbox Live is perfect

 

[silhouette]

I have been using the live for almost a year, and I cannot go back now. However, I hope they will introduce "groups" like a feature. For example, instead of adding all people from B3D one by one, I would be able to add B3D group as a whole, and then, I can see all people from here under a single list. This feature will also be very useful to organize group specific events as well, like hosting a tournament among us. I can just sent a message to the group, then host the game only the members of the group can join, etc. Or, we can form a group -say GoW team- here, and compete with another team from another group. It would be a very useful feature for guilds/clans/etc. That's what I miss mostly.

 

[Paul_G]

They already did something similar on some Xbox 1 games such as Halo 2 and Rainbow Six: 3, but i agree, something similar built into the dash would be nice

 

[RobertR1]

The "groups" feature would be nice. Other than that my experience has been very positive. I only started on Live with the 360 so I'm not sure how it was before. Over the past year, all their updates/changes have been desireable features.

The biggest positive for live is it's transparency to the user. It simply works. That's really the key.

 

[xmu]

The biggest positive for live is it's transparency to the user. It simply works. That's really the key.

I totally agree with this. I wasn't a fan of the original Xbox, and my X360 was an impulse purchase (like "hmm guess it might be nice to play oblivion or pgr3.. oh it's on sale there, here's my money"), but I've been extremely impressed with Live so far. Everything has just worked the way it should have. At first I had difficulties with my ADSL box and NAT, but they disappeared once I updated its firmware. After that it's been smooth sailing.

The only game with rubbish online play so far has been Lumines Live.. it seems to work a bit better nowadays, but for some reason it's still really laggy for me.

One thing I'd like to see improved is that none of the games I mostly play seem to have any indication of how many people are actually playing the game/waiting for someone to play with, where are they from and how good is the connection. Oh sorry, Uno (luv it ) does show connection speed. Another thing would be to add groups etc to the friends list, something similar to MSN.

There are a couple of things I don't like about the Dashboard, but that's for another thread

 

[scooby_dooby]

My biggest complaint is the matchmaking in some games, and general lag issues. Many games have needed to be patched weeks or months after release to be really playable, like Saint's Row, or COD2, by the time they finally patch it and get it working right, nobody wants to play it anymore. And most MP demo's I've played are also really glitchy, PREY and FarCry were both almost unplayable.

And in games like Splinter Cell, I've sat there for 20 minutes trying to join a match, takes forever to find a match and when you finally do it's either full, or the guy quits and you have to start all over again. I just gave up, tried hosting my own game finally and after 10 minutes of sitting there, gave up on that too.

Pretty damn annoying.

 

[22psi]

My biggest complaint is the matchmaking in some games, and general lag issues. Many games have needed to be patched weeks or months after release to be really playable, like Saint's Row, or COD2, by the time they finally patch it and get it working right, nobody wants to play it anymore. And most MP demo's I've played are also really glitchy, PREY and FarCry were both almost unplayable.

And in games like Splinter Cell, I've sat there for 20 minutes trying to join a match, takes forever to find a match and when you finally do it's either full, or the guy quits and you have to start all over again. I just gave up, tried hosting my own game finally and after 10 minutes of sitting there, gave up on that too.

Pretty damn annoying.

Those annoyances are more due to the developers than the service.

I agree with the OP, Live is totally worth the 50 bucks or so for a year. Sometimes a year's worth of Live goes on sale as well making it even a better deal.

 

[silhouette]

My biggest complaint is the matchmaking in some games, and general lag issues. Many games have needed to be patched weeks or months after release to be really playable, like Saint's Row, or COD2, by the time they finally patch it and get it working right, nobody wants to play it anymore. And most MP demo's I've played are also really glitchy, PREY and FarCry were both almost unplayable.

And in games like Splinter Cell, I've sat there for 20 minutes trying to join a match, takes forever to find a match and when you finally do it's either full, or the guy quits and you have to start all over again. I just gave up, tried hosting my own game finally and after 10 minutes of sitting there, gave up on that too.

Pretty damn annoying.

The final version of Prey was a lag-fest.. They were promised to patch it but I am not sure if it has ever happened (I did not play it after I beated the game).. GoW, R6-MP demo and Lost Planet:MP demo works like a charm though. No lag issue, no endless wait for host searches, just works as it is.

But, giving a second tought, finding a host should not be that much of a problem. If MS servers store the list of people hosting the game and the games contact MS servers to find a suitable host for the player, it should not be a problem (unless servers can not handle the load). However, I doubt this is the case right now.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

my biggest annoyance with xbox live is that the general public of gamers, do not realize how slow their internet connection is. Any game will lag if the host has to bad connection (unless ofcourse its a P2P based netcode, then a whole new set of things are to be factored in). There should be some kind of upload test system to prevent people with crappy connection to host games higher than X amount of players..

Like in GR:AW for example. Lots of morons who dont seem to figure out that they cannot host 16player matches on a 256kbps upload. It WILL lag, no matter how well you write the code, if the player got a crappy upload, it will lag with a good amount of players. And unfortunately, the general population of gamers are morons when it comes to this. A specially the hosts:

"Lag? Pfft, there is no lag, i get no lag"
"Thats because your hosting"
"Dude i got a cable connection, there is no lag, if it lags its on your side"
"Why do you think every time you host a 16player match, 6 players allways get dropped?"
.... and so it continues...

Good thing about GR:AW tho, is that it will automatically boot people left and right if it lags. The downside ofcourse is that you dont know if the player can host that many people when you enter the room to begin with.

Other downsides for me is that, atleast in R6:V and GR:AW is that when i search for a room, i dont want to wait for it to load all the rooms and ping it before displaying it, i want it to show the rooms on the fly. I remember in the early months of GR:AW it was a pain to wait up to 1-2 minutes in order to get all the rooms listed before you could select one and enter.

 

[Graham]

It's odd though, because some games still don't use the full features of live.
Gears, for example, doesn't show ping in the browser. This may be fine if your in the states, but over here thats a disaster. At least vegas shows a good ping representation.

That said the vast majority of the problems (as mentioned) are at the ISP level, and will be the case without dedicated servers run by the ISPs themselves. Yesterday, while playing gears with a friend in australia, he invited me to a match he was playing (hosted by another australian). His lag was fine, yet I was getting a 9 second delay to my actions (yet no jittering). When he setup a match himself, there was no noticeable delay at all.

I'd say 'clan' groups is a very good idea though. You'd wonder why it isn't a feature already.

 

[pipo]

I'd say 'clan' groups is a very good idea though. You'd wonder why it isn't a feature already.

It's on the list. I would expect it to go live with Halo 3.

There's a big (wish) thread somewhere in the xbox.com forums that's being monitored by the Live and Dashboard teams by the way. You can drop your requests there.

 

[AlNom]

If they were to either allow multiple simultaneous downloads, or a re-ordering tool to change download priority, i'd be very happy.

With the problems they just had with the video downloads, they'd probably have a whole lot more issues with simultaneous downloads. I'm assuming everything you download is off their servers... It'd be nice if they let companies handle the loads too (mirrors), but I guess that would be extra $$$ that don't go towards profits (unless they increase prices some more).

I've got to wonder if having serial downloads greatly discourages people from downloading everything in sight at the same time and lightening the load on their servers too. They'll still download what they want, but it's "eventually", but perhaps having it serial forces people to choose more carefully.

From my own experience, I'd probably download every game trailer and demo I could if there were parallel downloads. Since that's not the case, I download maybe one or two things a day because I couldn't be arsed to wait for it all to complete when I should be playing games (and those downloads seem to halt when I do play).

I'd love to see their monthly bandwidth figures over the last year. I don't care about how many millions of content people download, I want to know the bandwidth! Especially when they're looking at several millions of users.

 

[pipo]

E3 alone was 600 TB I believe...

 

[scooby_dooby]

With the problems they just had with the video downloads, they'd probably have a whole lot more issues with simultaneous downloads. I'm assuming everything you download is off their servers... It'd be nice if they let companies handle the loads too (mirrors), but I guess that would be extra $$$ that don't go towards profits (unless they increase prices some more).

I've got to wonder if having serial downloads greatly discourages people from downloading everything in sight at the same time and lightening the load on their servers too. They'll still download what they want, but it's "eventually", but perhaps having it serial forces people to choose more carefully.

From my own experience, I'd probably download every game trailer and demo I could if there were parallel downloads. Since that's not the case, I download maybe one or two things a day because I couldn't be arsed to wait for it all to complete when I should be playing games (and those downloads seem to halt when I do play).

I'd love to see their monthly bandwidth figures over the last year. I don't care about how many millions of content people download, I want to know the bandwidth! Especially when they're looking at several millions of users.

Why do people assume simultaneous downloads would be any faster? You'd probably stil be wqorkign with the same bandwidth, just split over multiple files. I prefer the serial method as it allows you to prioritize which one will finish first, whereas simultaneous, everything would just crawl...

 

[nintenho]

The only complaint I have is not downloading while playing. I'd also appreciate being able to use a browser and keyboard + mouse on 360.

 

[Tap In]

The only complaint I have is not downloading while playing. I'd also appreciate being able to use a browser and keyboard + mouse on 360.

they added that feature about 6 mos ago.

you can play any game or movie or music or whatever OFFline and download to your heart's content.

 

[nintenho]

they added that feature about 6 mos ago.
you can play any game or movie or music or whatever OFFline and download to your heart's content.

Yeah I mean downloading while playing games online. Probably very annoying for whoever plays MMORPG's.

 

[Tap In]

Yeah I mean downloading while playing games online. Probably very annoying for whoever plays MMORPG's.

I don't see how that would ever be implemented considering the lag it would undoubtedly introduce.
there is only so much bandwidth available on most people's connection.