Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@ThanosReXXX Aren't the official Elite thumbsticks made of metal except the rubber caps?

EDIT: Can anyone explain how to drift properly in Forza Horizon 3 and 4? Because I always have issues with this, especially getting enough points in the challenges. Spring in FH4 is super slippery in between. :S

EDIT 2: I just had a Kalimari Desert moment in FH4 on a road (Ambleside A 591) southeast of The Behemoth Showcase and north of Lakehurst Forest, the road that ends in a roundabout west of the city.

@BlueOcean Oh yeah, that could be right. Haven't got one myself, so I was automatically thinking of the sticks on the standard controller.

To drift, drive straight and full throttle into a bend, release the gas shortly, like for a second, and then steer into the bend while simultaneously pushing the throttle down again, and then steer against the bend, otherwise, you'll drift out of it.

You can also use a combination of the throttle and the emergency brake, if that is more easy for you to pull off. In that case, you won't need to release the gas: just quickly tap the emergency brake before you steer into the bend.

P.S.

What's a Kalimari Desert moment? Didn't know there were any deserts in Britain...

@ThanosReXXX A Kalimari Desert moment is when you have to brake because there is a train at the level crossing.

This is what I usually do but either I lose too much speed or drift out. So I tap the emergency brake once when I am going straight before turning, then I steer right if the bend is right and push the gas and turn left to compensate?

@NEStalgia @BlueOcean sure enough it was the controller causing me the issues with the bow, cannot believe the difference now - I should get some sort of special achievement for having been able to kill anything with the other one! Animals are still twitchy-af and I agree with NES's point about how far away the game encourages you to stand, but i'm not quite as petrified of/adamant I won't do hunting!

To illustrate the type of problems further Blue; having just completed said bow test above, I promptly jumped onto 'John Thomas' (my horse) and rode off towards my next mission only to be (inevitably) sidetracked by a gentleman shooting into the distance who asked me if I fancied having a little competition. Having been caught out by naively jumping off my horse before, I hold 'LT' - which would normally focus on the dude so i can ask him questions/discuss it with him - problem is I forgot to swap back from 'bow' to 'unarmed' and it takes me a second to realise why he's suddenly shouting obscenities and filling me full of lead; Arthur is pointing the bow squarely at the guys face. Yes the game thought I wanted to threaten the guy with the big loaded rifle with my bow and arrow. I like the attention to detail but this needless busywork is maddening - needless to say I died.

On respawn I went to the next objective and ignored any calls for attention. My horse cut the corner of a field at the farm which was (somehow) enough to turn everyone hostile, so I died. Again. On respawn I went up, got off my horse and was prepared at least for any hostility. Spoke to a couple of people before I located the guy I'd been sent to capture (alive); once alerted by the NPC's, said dude rocketed off on a horse, only mine by now is so far away that by the time I whistle/get to it I've failed the quest as the guy's escaped so I have to restart yet again. I remember thinking this whilst playing through GTA 5 - why do they have to slather this 20-30% layer of frustration onto what is an undoubtedly otherwise excellent game?

Was talking to a friend about it and he's deciding between getting RDR and AC:Odyssey; might be a surprise given the complaining I've been doing but I recommended - and would to anyone else - RDR2 above either Origins or Odyssey. There's nowhere near this level of frustration in the AC games, but then in the 10 hours of RDR I've played I've already done more memorable things than in either of Ubisoft's offerings. Hope that helps to balance a little bit why I'm still going? It's not just so i can keep whinging at you all

Wow services are still down according to status! Sheesh, that's a full day outage! No SoT reprise for me today!

@blueocean nah, i was just posting the invitial notifications. Core was down first. Store/dl/licensing then was down. That's supposedly back up. FIFA is, oddly, reported as down all evening though.

@ThanosReXXX could be coincidence, but other unrelated online services seem to be having tons of problems this month as well. Makes me wonder if theres something else going on if the warfare variety.

Or rdr2 imploded Microsoft. Maybe Nintendo gets their turn in Smashcember.

@BrainOfGrimlock LOL The gentleman that killed you with a rifle because you accidentally raised your bow because of the controls and the town that considered you a criminal because your horse stepped on the corner of a vegetables field says it all. It is funnier as an anecdote than as real gameplay though. Red Dead Desperation 2.

I bought a lot of Assassin's Creed games on sales but I have only played the first which I really liked. I hope to like the others too.

As of time of writing, looking at the Xbox Support Twitter account it still appears to be down. Checking the actual site itself and yep, still down. Wow that’s one hell of a problem. They best get this fix by the time weekend begins.

@BlueOcean You might also want to consider turning the traction control off so that you can stop the car trying to right itself. Using the e-brake method is what the drift club story of Horizon 4 teaches, along with needing control and careful application of brakes to get a tighter line through some bends. Also, don't try the zones both ways. Stick to doing them from one side only and learn from mistakes. Me being an inconsistent noodle failed to do even that.

And I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this one before, but I just find it so funny. Someone during a Forzathon Live got blindsided by a train and went flying. They didn't even see it coming.

Why do modern games like RDR2 and FH4 have 16 control layouts but don't let you just map the buttons manually? In FH4 if you choose manual transmission there is no control layout with a button for the map, so not even Xbox accessories app can help you with that, wtf? I would sacrifice horn, quick chat and photo mode before the map. Yes, you can open the map from the menu but a direct access is much more efficient. A minor complaint is that you can't cycle the radios backwards because the left D-pad is always mapped to quick chat, this is a step backwards from FH3.

I have never played a racing game with manual transmission but I read that this is better for drifting, should I try? They also say to turn off ABS, traction control and stability control and to use a car for drifting (???).

It looks like this might be the first ever >24h XBox outage. I doubt Azure suddenly just fails, especially with Office 365 and SQL Server apparently not having login issues. I can't begin to guess what happened with XBox. All I can think of is, like the time(s) PSN was down for a week, a hack/DDOS attempt. I hope it's up tonight. Not that I'd mind more Starlink on Switch instead. Really fun game.

The whole "if you get an error code, delete your account for your XBox then recover the account" message is a little disquieting too.

@FragRed I feel bad that this is your introduction to XBox! It's not normally so.....Sony-like I had a 360 and don't recall it ever being down. I got my 1X in May, and it was, I don't believe, down once, until October. Now it's the 4th outage, and at 24h+ the longest one I think they've ever had! It's a little worrisome to me with over 200 digital games on tap that they're suddenly so unstable. Usually I'm the jinx on absolutely everything. Things that work perfectly for decades go to pot the moment I get one. In this case though, I bought an X1 and a few weeks later they introduce folders after 5 years of people complaining then giving up. You buy an X1 and they turn the servers off and go home. I'm really hoping it's back up tonight. It always feels uneasy having your entire digital library stripped for an unknown period. This is a pretty awful outage, or rather, series of outages, that I don't want to see become routine.

@BlueOcean Most people still prefer AC2 over all others...I still feel something about 1 just "works" in a way no other entry in the series does. I'll be curious after you've played both what your take is. I think for most players it's either going to be 1, 2, or Origins that becomes the favorite. 1 is slightly unique. 2 was the refinement of 1's formula into the more "HBO treatment" (their words) they gave the series for years. 2.5, 2.8, 3, 3.5, 3.8 are iterative (or regressive in the case of 3 at least before the upcoming remaster.) 4 and Syndicate were interesting games but not necessarily "AC" games, traditionally speaking. 4's a fun pirate game, but not really AC much at all. Origins was a reboot with a sort BotW-ification of the formula but a return to some of 1's concepts. Odyssey will be divisive. It's a total genre shift to RPG, some will love it, some will hate it, and some will feel it's not really "AC" with it's focus on more combat (like 3.) From what I've seen so far it can be played stealth though.

@BlueOcean That drives me crazy as well. Reminds of of MHGU on Switch, they added running to R3 click as an option in a weird menu to make it match World, but that means the map settings are only in the menu, and you can't remap. I also don't understand why games don't support full button mapping by default. Just creating a mapper would seem like no more effort than pre-configured controls. Even Platinum and FROM has been doing that. It's pretty sad when Japan starts adopting "do it your your own way" before Western developers.

I do turn off traction, stability, and ABS. I haven't tried the drifting challenges yet, but I do drift regularly in general. I've never used manual transmission though. If you have the Elite, there's a pre-fab Forza 7 manual w/ clutch controller config you can download in the Accessories app from Turn 10 that could easily be tuned for Horizon. I haven't done manual, but if doing manual without a wheel/stick/pedals setup, I feel like Elite is the only way to make it feel actually sane.

@NEStalgia Yeah sorry about that. I had an Xbox 360 and have been eager to play some of the games I still own on my X. Once I’ve played RDR2 and Horizon 4 that is. But I couldn’t do either because of the outage I somehow bought upon the world. This is why I would never be allowed in a data centre. Just imagine the carnage I’d cause just by my very presence

I find the timing a little funny for this outage.
Think about it. Microsoft put that status message up at near enough 14:30 GMT - half an hour after the Smash Direct starts. What with the leak saying that Banjo and Kazooie would be in the game, then about ten minutes after the Direct starts it's proven false.
Are we sure some salty Smash fans haven't taken it out on the Microsoft servers?

Because that would make sense.

@DarkRula You know, given the smash fanbase......that actually wouldn't surprise me even slightly. OTOH this is just the latest in a series of month-long recurring outages. I thought maybe all the Game Pass people getting FH4 simultaneously took down servers the first time. Then I thought maybe all the upgrades needed for releasing RDR2+Fallout were involved. They could be.

There was actually a 5th partial outage. My ISP (one of the big ones) was entirely unable to hit anything xbox login related (including the app, web login, etc) for about 8 hours maybe 2 weeks ago. If I accessed via my phone carrier it worked. Something was "broken" between the two, and it wasn't just a DNS update as I tried Google's DNS servers too. All month something odd/transitional has been going on with XBL. 4 actual XBL outages, plus at least one that broke a specific large ISP from signing in for an overnight period.

Maintenance/upgrades gone very very bad maybe.

@DarthNocturnal Where do I insert my credit card for XCloud?

@NEStalgia I'm looking forward to some xCloud news. Have had the opportunity to play AC Odyssey on Googles Project Stream and its been stellar! Very few hiccups at all, runs great on every pc I've tried. Granted I know I'm fortunate to live in what is essentially Silicon Valley east and most don't but if it's a smooth as PS has been they will earn my business!

@redd214 Yeah, that's the thing with streaming, if you live where you live, or Japan it can be excellent (though the video of AC:O on Switch showed frame pacing issues. Then again AC:O has frame pacing issue locally on X1X, too....

But if you live...basically anywhere else, game streaming is just so.....choppy. It depends how sensitive you are to frame issues though. I use local LAN streaming from 1X to my Surface Pro sometimes. It works well enough, but it feels latent to me. And that's with using the controller still directly connected to the XBox over BT, not going through the Surface. That's with zero more input lag than normally, on LAN. Same for SteamLink. So streaming over internet feels that much worse to me.

Still, if the price is right I technically have good internet for it. I just don't think the backbone can keep up

Servers back up according to status page! @FragRed