Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@BlueOcean Oh, yeah the exclusives starting with SoT are not supposed to rotate, they're permanent AFAIK. They've also added a lot of pre-SoT stuff. MCC, Halo 5, Quantum Break, ReCore, Gears 1 & 4, Forza 7. Even as an MS-only sub it's pretty cool. That's how I got FH4 until a good sale, and SoT which I doubt I'd buy but it's fun to play with, plus Crackdown 3 in a few months. I like Game Pass in general. I would like to see it become a bit more "netflix" for 3rd parties rather than what is at times a dumping ground of unloved and promotional titles, but the MS stuff alone is top notch. EA sells their own GP clone unfortunately for their legacy titles, which is just kind of gross. It's "cheap", but I hear it's all but impossible to cancel the auto billing. It would have been nicer to unify that than have that weird EA Access thing going on too.

@BrainOfGrimlock LOL, well a broken controller would take the RDR2 controls to a whole new level of NG+ That makes sense with the hunting now! Elite is fine wireless....technically for wired I prefer the Razer Wolverine Ultimate, anyway

The Elite actually has infamously delicate bumpers. Metal bumper buttons with the same plastic "bridge" connecting them as the stock controller.

As for RDR2, well hunting I don't think is problematic (bland, uninspired, and arrow physics best described as Elf Magic, but not problematic.) Cover system is still junk though

There's issues for signing into Xbox Live, and since I haven't set the console to remember my password or become my home console, I'm locked out of everything.
I really should have done those things as soon as I had it...

All good stuff but Forza Motorsport 7 is not on Game Pass.

If Game Pass included all third-party games it would be much more expensive and you know that while some big publishers like to try Xbox Game Pass a little bit (Capcom, Square Enix and Sega, ironic being Japanese companies), others would rather have their own subscription (EA) and others don't want to rent their games at all (Rockstar?). Each publisher has a different business approach but they like to test the waters sometimes. Obviously, small publishers see Game Pass as a chance to gain further benefits. Thanks for describing RDR2 controls, it is insightful.

@BrainOfGrimlock I want to read that controls review of yours. I always felt that bows were easy to get right on a controller after playing games like the new Tomb Raider trilogy (the combination or analogue trigger and trigger rumble on Xbox One is awesome) so it seems that Red Dead Redemption 2 is using cumbersome combinations and uncommon button mapping for lots of actions and even alternative controls/context controls for a single button? This is where I get lost so perhaps you and @NEStalgia could compare it to other games? A context button only works fine when it's a "story" button like in Resident Evil 4 (use, open, kick, drain, etc.). For quick and frequent actions that you can perform anywhere it seems confusing.

@ThanosReXXX Thanks, I only need stick caps, I was hoping that somebody had bought some and could recommend. Otherwise I'll just get any. The ones that broke if you are curious are the concave ones and now I am using the convex ones. Now it's funny because I see that each design has its own advantages. EDIT: I see that the last link is for official spare parts, but I can't register the Elite controller serial number.

@BlueOcean Hmm, you're right, I thought I remembered they were going to add Motorsport 7, but it's not there.

Yeah Game Pass, and eventually streaming is going to at some point become the Disnified mess that TV streaming has become where to get all the games you'll need a subscription to Microsoft, EA, 2k, Ubi (but to get all the Ubi games you'll need the Ubi Premier pass, except Just Dance which will have its own separate pass), Warner pass, Squeenix Pass, Sega pass, and then by the time you're done you're paying $250/mo for game access, but Comcast will bundle it in your cable bill for a mere $293 with basic TV, STARZ, and high speed internet (capped at 1TB.) (Some of that is lost on you in the UK, but still )

RDR2 Controls: The uncommon button mapping is frustrating, but that's the part that (eventually) you learn to live with. You still do unintended things from time to time because of it out of instinct though. 90% of games have map on SELECT (View), this one puts "cycle camera angles" on that button and puts map on "press and hold START (Menu)". Reload on B. Pick up object is on X, unless it's a gun, then you press and hold Y for unknown reasons. Other objects that are story objects are sometimes Y for unknown reasons instead of X. It changes depending on situation.

There's one critical context button: LT. It doesn't really compare to any other game because of the nature of LT. "use/open/kick/drain for RE4" all falls under "interact" as a command on one button. This isn't like that specifically. LT has two functions in RDR2.

LT Mode 1: Draw and aim gun (like 99% of all other games with guns. Gears, Halo (with aimable guns), Destiny, etc.

LT Mode 2: "Bring up interaction menu in bottom right corner for object in the general direction you're looking at." This is the context problem. In this mode, if I'm walking or riding down the street and want to "lock on" to the sheriff standing on he corner and greet, provoke, etc. him I look more or less at him, the camera locks onto him as I walk/ride, and I can hit A to greet, B to provoke, or contextually, maybe Y to ask for a quest update, or such. Similarly in a store, I can hold LT to look at the shelf items I can buy and hit Y to "examine" or A to "Buy" depending on the menu options.

Mode 2 on its own sounds problematic and unreliable because it is unreliable. Especially when menu options can be grayed out until you're standing in the right place, for no reason. And you always have to read the bottom right options to know the available options.

Where it becomes more problematic than annoying is when the game isn't short if you want to interact, or draw a gun. So my prior example was a quest giver, broken down wagon driver. I went to "interact" with him in mode 2. The game didn't realize he was interactable at that moment, or I was looking at the wrong angle. Instead Arthur draws a gun and aims at the guy. The guy freaks out, gets on his remaining horse, abandons his wagon, and rides away. Quest opportunity lost. Maybe forever? Maybe he respawns at some point. Because the game decided I meant LT Mode 1: Aim a gun.

So standing in front of a guy, your only way to interact is "aim at him" with LT. The game decides if you mean "aim camera and bring up interaction/talk menu" or "aim a gun at his head." Usually it gets it right. Sometimes it doesn't.

It also gets it wrong with my earlier cat example. If you're looking at something that can't be interacted with a man that was hung and his deputy executioner, it seems to pick the next object in line of sight (even if it's not visible on screen/behind a partial wall) to interact with.

Finally the 3rd place it errors is in hostage type situations. You hold LT to aim a gun. Instead it brings up an interaction menu. That much I can even understand (you're aming at both a hostile and friendly after all.) But then inexplicably you hit the RT button...a button that has no other function than "fire weapon", in order to tell it you'd like to enter "aim gun mode". So you effectively have to fire, to tell it you intend to fire later. Imagine picking up a real gun with instructions that say "cock chamber and pull trigger to remove safety, then aim and pull trigger to fire". That's RDR2's hostage encounters. You just have to remember "right now do I am then fire, or do I aim then use the interaction menu, or aim then press the fire button to ready the weapon to fire?"

It's the kind of stuff you can train your mind to deal with it, but it tends to cause some fumbling and mistakes anyway when in fast/stressful moments. 95% of the time the game guesses right. But that 5% of the time it doesn't stands out in memory.

@DarkRula don't tell me XBL account/store/licensing servers are down again? They never went down for 15 years. Suddenly it's frequent.

@NEStalgia Yeah I can’t log in either. Apparently according to Xbox Support Twitter they know about it. Both Sony and Microsoft seem to frequently have problems nowadays it seems

The only thing that's having a problem is signing in. Which kind of means everything else is unaccessible if you need to do so.

@FragRed sigh this is sad. 15 years almost never a problem. Suddenly 4 outages in a month!

Services

Limited
Xbox Live Core Services

11/1/2018, 10:29:44 AM

Signing in; creating, managing, or recovering an account; search

Affected platforms:
Xbox One

Affected services:

If you are prompted for your Microsoft Account password and then receive error 0x80a4001a, do the following: Remove your Xbox account from the console and recover your account to the console. When recovering, select either 'No Barriers' or 'Use a Passkey'.

Latest update:

The issue involving Xbox Live sign-in is taking longer than anticipated to resolve. Thanks for standing by as the team works diligently to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

Want to get notified when this feature is back online?

@DarkRula Yeah, I love that "online game services are up and running! Store is up and running! But....yeah you can't sign in......so you can't use them....

Nintendo Switch Online is starting to look like the best online service around

@NEStalgia It was me who did this. By purchasing that Xbox One X and installing Forza 4, I inevitably took down the Xbox One servers. With great power, comes great destruction

@NEStalgia I wouldn't mind much, but even going into offline mode - you cannot sign in meaning no access to games at all [unless it's your 'home' console, I think].

@BlueOcean That's probably because the link is for the Australian site, which is why I said that you should look for the relevant site for your own region. As far as thumbstick caps go, or replacement thumbsticks, you can also browse that site in the first link: it has all kinds of spare parts for controllers of every platform.

Personally, I often use tmart.com for a lot of things, because it's a site which I've found to be very reliable and prices are pretty decent. They haven't got Xbox One thumb sticks or caps, though.

I myself have been thinking about getting all aluminum thumb sticks, instead of just replacing the rubber caps, seeing as I've also worn out a few of those, on multiple controllers, over the last 8 years.

The aluminum thumb sticks are concave, just like the ones on the standard Xbox One controller, so they'll feel just like the real thing, except without the rubber coating.

If I somehow triggered your curiosity, you can find those sticks here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3D...

Or here:
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_i...

I just turned it on and signed in without any issues.

EDIT: @ThanosReXXX I was chatting with a woman on Xbox support for an hour and half, she will send me an email...

Well, no sign-in issues here either. Just activated the download for this month's "free" game Battlefield 1.
Gonna take a while at over 74GB, and that's 4K textures excluded...

@FragRed Usually I'm the jinx. Weird.

@DarkRula yeah, "offline" mode only works for the games that belong to it as a "home console", to access games not owned by the owner of that "Home console", it has to verify it with the licensing server (which makes sense.) I hit that problem myself because I use the "game sharing" for two XBoxes in one home to play the same games, so mine always have to be online when I play. Switch now supports that too, but it's harder on Switch because it's portable and giving someone else "your" console means you can't play it out of internet range.... With PSXBox it's always at home anyway so it doesn't matter if you just swap hardware. Except when XBL is down...

@DarthNocturnal Lucky you could get in. Looks like Core is still down, and store/licensing/downloading has now gone down again too, marking, officially, the forth time for that one in about 3-3.5 weeks.

Limited
Purchase and Content Usage

11/1/2018, 1:30:43 PM

Buying items, redeeming codes, or downloading purchases

Affected platforms:
Xbox One
Xbox on Windows 10

Affected services:

Buying downloadable items

Latest update:

Our engineers and developers are actively continuing to work to resolve the issue causing some members to have problems purchasing content. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience.

Want to get notified when this feature is back online?

@Thanosrexxx @BlueOcean I suspect the server issues are regional most of the time. It's possible it depends what datacenter you're on. Darth could get in, but the official status still says it's down, or "Limited" implying some people or some functions may have access.

Everything but signing in is still a-ok for the UK.
Which still doesn't help.

@NEStalgia Xbox are always looking for more people to lower the online standards to PlayStation level

@NEStalgia Are you going to keep posting the Xbox Live reports all day long? That won't make PlayStation Plus or Nintendo Online look any better. The issues can be checked on here at any time:

https://xbox.com/status

@ThanosReXXX I will have a look, they offered my the three official thumbstick pairs for GBP16.67 (USD21.68) on Microsoft Support.

Is it weird that on the xbox status page it lists only one game specifically as having an issue (Fifa 19)? If it's related to the MS outage then weird (and i don't normally - not that i sit refreshing the MS page every day - see games listed, especially 3rd party ones) it doesn't affect other games, especially other EA sports titles (madden/nhl etc)? Obviously know jack about their infrastructure so speaking from a complete point of ignorance/could make perfect sense - just odd.

@BlueOcean haven't fired up RDR yet today but @NEStalgia has pretty much hit most of the nails on the head with his last reply on it; character control is cumbersome, aiming a weapon is horrific with auto-aim and... erratic? yeah let's go with erratic when it's off, and snapping into and out of cover is 50% within your control and 70% up to the rng gods (see, that doesn't even make sense, that's how bizarre it is! ). You certainly adapt - at least if you have a working controller - but I'm still struggling with some of the contextual stuff (as NES mentioned, LT aims your gun almost all of the time, until it's RT), and give up trying to look at/pick up an individual item, you will need to pick them all up in the order the game determines before you get to the one you want. Only other thing of note for me is how old school some of the other bits of the game are - wander too far from an objective during a mission and it may/may not warn you and you get game over/mission failed and you have to do the previous parts again - yep, R*'s frankly horrific checkpoint system is back. I'll leave it there because I'm aware that every time I write about the game I'm taking a 'mess' on it so the logical question would be why on earth am I still playing it? Answer is because underneath this layer of barbed wire and badger stink is an endless pot of the most delicious food you can imagine (I'm imagining halloumi cheese) masquerading as a game... It's a game wrapped in some horribly dated game design and awful controls, or a diamond rolled in turds if you'd like a more colourful analogy?

I'm also setting the expectation bar low so you may be pleasantly surprised when you start it up. It isn't that bad and is perfectly playable - it's a lot like the original RDR and not so many people were complaining back then, it's just that as games have improved a lot of this stuff, this one has kept a foot in the past.

Got my elite charging up now so will let you know how I get on with the hunting when using a working controller. I find it morbidly hilarious that it only intermittently broke so I thought it was the game fighting me - wonder how long it's been like that and I haven't noticed? Also wondering if I broke it playing PES as it can get tense late on and I'm notoriously heavy handed on my controllers sometimes without realising!

EDIT: Forgot to add about the map button as mentioned by others - that is the one thing I haven’t/cannot/will not adapt too, my old struggling brain just cannot unlearn that one so I am destined to change my view 500 times an hour whilst I wander aimlessly!

Aha! I see there's a Xbox One S Minecraft bundle coming out this month on amazon. Suspiciously suspicious. I bet that's the one they'll have on sale for the holiday season.

I'll have to keep a close eye on it.

@BrainOfGrimlock It also says "Signing in; creating, managing, or recovering an account; search". FIFA probably has online issues and that's why it appears on "Games". People affected by the sign-in issues will have to wait and/or keep checking on here (EDIT: or click on NOTIFY ME).

https://xbox.com/status

Let's hope that they solve it soon though. Whenever I can't sign in, normally because of my internet connection, I just go offline (you can always sign in offline) and I can play without any issues. The next time I go online my save data is backed up again, this is my favourite thing, reminds me that my save data is safe.

Back to RDR2 it is interesting reading you and NEStalgia's complaints because they make sense and I think that it's positive that people complain so eventually Rockstar realises that players want sensible controls and not solving mental riddles before pressing buttons...

@NEStalgia But what is even weirder is that all or even most of the disturbances have taken and are taking place in the US, whereas I haven't had a single problem over here, each and every time you or anyone else mentioned a disturbance or technical issue with the service. And to think that the US is Microsoft's home base...

@BlueOcean Sounds like a fair deal, but it's still only plastic sticks. I'm still tempted by the aluminum ones...