Online play on console vs PC

ebagg

So when I got an xbox 360 I used the free gold membership for a month, and played Halo 2 online. I'd say every other person on there would yell and swear up a storm at anything I did wrong. Needless to say I didn't subscribe to gold after that month. I recently rejoined with the free month card I got after getting my 360 repaired. I mostly wanted to play cooperative halo 3 with friends. One friend tonight insisted on playing deathmatch online so off we go, taking a few long minutes to match make each time. Every time we were in the lobby with people, the shit talking would start even if I didn't say a word. The final game I played tonight one guy started swearing at me from the moment he saw my screen name, just talking shit nonstop. Is xbox live matchmaking always this ridiculous!? Is Playstation online any better?

Meanwhile I've played online games with voice chat for the past 8 years. And maybe over the course of all those years have I been insulted as much as I have been in the two free months of xbox live.

I know this divide in player maturity is probably old news to many of you. I'm just dumbfounded.

Uly

Remove the barrier of entry which is the simple act of calibrating a microphone, and make the result a bit dumber.

cyborgguineapig

Xbox live and all the console communities could learn a thing or two from the PC gaming community. My dad always tells me, how come Europe hasn't declared war lately like the US? Answer, Europe has seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of war to realize it f*cking sucks to go to war. Despite centuries of experience, do we listen to Europe? No we don't. My point (if there is one) is: PC community > Xbox live

pliang

Unfortunately the situation does not improve on a different platform...same people + different platform.

At least from my own experience....not even my own consoles.

dejawolf

well, different platforms attract different people.

Marine

worst i've seen in pc games, and my experience with voice chat is limited to cs and tf2, is some twat playing their music over the microphone, and i've only had that happen a couple of times at most. mostly it's just some guy who has a crappy microphone and you can't hear them clearly.

Asmuel

Worst I've seen was probably on Halo 2 for Xbox. I ended up in a clan mostly made up of black people (or atleast they sounded black), and often ended up playing redneck clans who scream racist slurs into their headsets. XBL easy to report people on now though.

Xbox seems to be more accessible to fucktards. Perhaps if your too stupid to know how to conduct yourself online, your too stupid to know how to install a game on your PC j/k

Rick Stirling

360 Live is great, as is its voicechat. Unfortunately it is also full of pricks.

Playing online with a bunch of people you know with voicechat is a superb experience. Playing with 12 year olds requires constant use of the mute button (and me breaking my near total silence to ask them to kindly shut up).

Me: "xxx - would you please shut up? Your nasally voice and constant whining is rather annoying."

xxx : "Fuck you fucking fuck you! what the fuck did you say? rick string! fuck you! you can't even thing of a good name! I'm an american! we fucking rul! we have the biggest army! i'm going to fuck your mom!"

Me: "My mother died at the weekend." MUTE.

vahl

yeah, I usually chat with friends while playing (the same game or not) and for that the live is quite awesome, when I want to play alone I just mute the chat, that's pretty handy and your game experience is still there.

notman

Let's face it, there is a generation of morons who are growing up without much human interaction and run around with their 'internet balls'. What's worse is when they have more control over your access to the server. Me and my brother were playing GoW at his place and decided to try playing it online. It was his first time trying it online, so he wasn't familar with the maps yet. Our 'teammate' got pissed that my brother wasn't using his headset, then when they lost rather quickly (because my brother was finding his way around), the guy started cussing, then we got kicked from the server. It really makes online play enticing

Personally, I prefer to only play online with people I know. That way, if there are a few that I don't know, they usually don't get out of line long when half the server knows each other.

One thing I've experienced a lot, on the PC, was how idiots use teamspeak these days. There are some people that have so little entertainment in their lives, that they decide to jump on to random teamspeak channels and try to talk shit. I've actually experienced the opposite of what Rick described. One time, we had someone speaking German join in and start telling us how much Americans suck. We've learned to ignore these idiots and they'll go away faster, but this particular guy went on for about 15 minutes before finally giving up.

We need to arrange more Polycount gatherings on the weekends (I don't play my 360 during the week usually and I have a limited game list)

ironbearxl

This is why I will never buy xbox/xbox live membership and why I keep mic volume turned off or all the way down in TF2.

Slum

When I had my free gold membership, i played classic doom deathmatch , which was a blast. It was me and a few other guys, all laughing at killing each other with rockets.. Good fun. Also, I played quite a bit of GRAW, with no issues. People seemed pretty cool and courteous in most of the games I played, but I suppose that's probably not the case in the majority of games.

Mishra

on xbox live most people seem to be decent, but theres often one or two people in a room who are complete fucktards. so i mute them. problem solved, and i suggest that other people mute them too and then they do, so we can be more civilized. also i report the people. most of the time they 12 year olds on an m-rated game. but the vast majority of people i've played with are fine, maybe one in six games have fuckwads.

bounchfx

I'm not going to refuse to play online because some people can't shut the fuck up. That's why the system is handy, you can mute anyone and you can rate them down so you never play with them again.

It's inappropriate as hell, yeah, but overall it's a good experience to have available. I actually haven't run into too many idiots on CoD4, but besides that I honestly haven't been playing many games lately.

Joseph Silverman

[ QUOTE ]
Xbox live and all the console communities could learn a thing or two from the PC gaming community. My dad always tells me, how come Europe hasn't declared war lately like the US? Answer, Europe has seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of war to realize it f*cking sucks to go to war. Despite centuries of experience, do we listen to Europe? No we don't. My point (if there is one) is: PC community > Xbox live

[/ QUOTE ]

That makes no sense. Why don't we declare war on europe, in that case?

Europe doesn't decare war on us because it would be logistical and strategic idiocy, and they have no desire to. It's not like there's just one 'europe' army chilling waiting to be thrown at a country, either.


And yeah, I like console online a lot more. PC has more hacking, more elitism, and on most games, more idiots who are a lot more difficult to mute. Plus, trying to play on any server in practically any game and being hit by 10 minutes of downloads or custom mods, or playing on a server which's gameplay makes no sense (sabotage mode in COD4, built around a wave respawn system and pushes to get the bomb to a base at either side of the map, with no respawns! Awesome!) is a lot more annoying than just playing on some xbox game's built in matchmaking.

ebagg

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This is why I will never buy xbox/xbox live membership and why I keep mic volume turned off or all the way down in TF2.

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Maybe I've just been lucky, the most annoyances I've had in TF2 is just the whiney pitch of the 10 year olds, and once or twice a racist remark on one server that's notoriously "adult". Otherwise 99% of the time is just chatter of teammates coordinating and a the occasional light hearted jabs on the side.

I was just surprised at every time my team lost, the other team would be saying stuff like THAT WAS PATHETIC, YOU LOSERS. Never once in the few hours I played did I hear a single "good game"!

Rick Stirling

TF teamplay is normally quite good, COD4 is the opposite, or so I've found.

Foehammer

yeah for the most part ive had a good experience on Xbox Live, if i play with one other friend in Halo or Cod4 i just invite him to private chat, otherwise I use the "mute" button like its going out of style