Gotta ask a PC centric forum about this, do you consider Live a ripoff?

There's an argument about this on neogaf but its they're console centric and most of them (majority of gaf dont even play PC games), got their first gaming online experience with Live, it seems that, they simply accept to pay.

Now, since all of you are PC gamers, lets consider this.

Xbox live

-Game matchmaking = p2p
-Voice chat = p2p
-Buddy lists/ignore lists = been done since a while on PC and is free on PSN and while not as user friendly or developed, is also free on Wii.
-Arcade games = You pay for that
-Themes = You pay for that
-DLC content = some of it were free, epic argued with MS and its now paying content for the most part, things that will be free for PC and PS3
-Patches = Should we really pay for fixes to a game we already paid in full and even 10$ more than PC equivalent?
-Demos and videos = some will say this is where its worth the price, but the catch is that silver members who pay nothing get access to 99% of this and even if they dont get it on the same day, sooner or later they do, PSN also does this for free and well, PC isnt even a question to ask.

So basicly, when you think about it, Live is a fancy interface that takes a lot of things into one but can they really justify the price for much longer? PSN is quickly catching up, steam community just launched and while wii totally sucks with friend lists, at least its FREE, i dont mind a bit of work to get something working if i dont pay for the service, im sure you understand.

50$ a year for *****peer matches, no dedicated servers

really

wow

Keep in mind that im currently a gold subscriber on live so im part of the problem, thing is, i didnt think silver members had access to nearly everything except game matches, and since its got exclusives that i cant play elsewhere, well i'll pay if its to play gears of war or halo online, but i just find it mind blowing that microsoft can justify the price of Live.

Imagine if we had to pay a fee for p2p matches on PC games since over a decade? Forget about doom/quake/counterstrike/team fortress/diablo/tribes and countless other games we've been playing since years for free, most of them would've flopped or the PC online community wouldnt have developed as much as it has with a price tag attached to their online matches.

Also MS' stubbornness with Epic's gears of war DLC content to charge money for it, it really irks me, if epic wants to offer it free, then STFU MS.

Charging high prices for arcade games, charging for gamer themes/pictures (stuffs that really should be free for most of them), charging for DLC stuffs that developers wanted to offer freely, 50$ a year for peer 2 peer and not a single dedicated server in sight

I might just drop Live after i get a few months of fun out of halo 3 and go with PS3's PSN service.

Patches are free on XBL, you can get them on the silver (free) plan. Demos and videos are available on the free plan too AFAIK.

EDIT: And I think it's worth the money since it's so much better than anything I ever used 'for free' on a PC. All the things on PCs were gamecentric, anything that tried to centralize things sucked.

EDIT2: In regards to DLC, I agree with you. Charging for themes and gamer pictures is retarded, but there's obviously dozens/hundreds of companies/people out there who love the idea and charge for it.

I refuse to support it though and I only use anything I can get for free.

i will always stand behind my PC gaming and its free multiplayer. hell, i can admit to paying $15 a month for SWG for a while, but eventually that got old.
Its kinda hard to compare console to PC when it comes to pros and cons. they each have something that is highly lauded for their particular niche of customers.
sure yer paying a premium for some advanced services that are already free and a staple of PC gaming, but you also get a console that (normally) doesnt need upgrading or new drivers or a screwdriver and static bracelet to replace hardware.
console gaming is the black box of gaming, it sums up the most important parts of PC gaming, and gives it a platform dedicated environment that developers only have to code for once, while on PC, the same developers have to take in account hardware issues, as it has been constantly seen that some people are running quad core QX6800 but have 1 gig of ram and a 1900 pro.
most console gamers have no idea nor the need to understand why they need to install games or change a firewall port to play their multiplayer games. they are paying a small premium to ignore all of that and just know that they buy a game, they purchase a gold account, and they can play their friends.

and while PC gamers have no need of paying monthly to play CSS or quake 4, we do have the added overhead of having to keep upgrading or systems to meet game specs.
we also have to have some working knowledge of games to get around things like firewalls and lag and such. but, as a PC gamer, i enjoy the fact that i can fine tune a game to my liking. that i can turn the specs of CSS all the way down to 1.5 levels to get that extra few frames in.
i also enjoy drooling over 9800GTX cards that will cost me my marriage but will give me crysis at 60+ frames.

not to dumb down console gamers, but its basically paying for being slightly ignorant. you want simplicity and great gameplay, and sometimes it will cost money.

Its really only like 3.50$ a month for XBL. So its not really a big deal, I make that in like 15 minutes.

I agree that paying for themes or pictures is ****ing retarded as well, so I just don't get them. The only thing I've actually bought on XBL was the TMNT arcade game, and the fun we got out of that in one or two nights was worth more than the 3 dollars or whatever it ended up costing.

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Originally Posted by nattylife

not to dumb down console gamers, but its basically paying for being slightly ignorant. you want simplicity and great gameplay, and sometimes it will cost money.

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I was pretty much with you til this part. Every single time a thread similar to this comes up (eg. why do X with a console when X is so much better on PC) someone calls console players dumb or ignorant. I just don't get that. I build my own PCs, set up my wireless home network, and I've had damn near every console ever made. So am I still dumb or slightly ignorant? I wish the stereotype of the idiot 10 year old kid would be dropped when someone talks about console gaming....it's just getting really old. Not a personal attack Natty, just sayin'....

Anyway, regarding Live, I don't really know what PC gamers think about it. I guess that's the point of the thread. Personally, I won't pay for Live unless there is absolutely no other way to play multiplayer PC games. However, I haven't played an online PC game for quite some time. I guess it comes down to personal choice; if it's important enough to play then I guess we'll pay. We don't always have to like it, but short of not buying a particular game that requires Live, there's not much you can do.

for me it's not really the about the price as to me it's not that much...but I do think that they go a little overboard on microtransactions...like strategy guides and themes are just stupid...I don't know anyone who buys that stuff...but I like live because it's integrated so well...I mean I can get a game invitation to play gears of war when I'm playing guitar hero 2...accept it...insert the gears of war disk and it automatically stats up...connects to the server and I'm playing within 2 minutes of getting the invitation...it's all pretty seamless and works really well which is kind of a hit and miss with other consoles

on the pc side it's nothing like that...if I'm not using xfire I tell my friend to join this server...but first we have to find a way to get the ip address...copy the ip address into the server browser...but wait...ctrl+c/v doesn't work...so I have to get out a pen and paper and write it down then connect...assuming the server isn't full yet...xfire works pretty well but it doesn't support all the games...I would really like it if xfire was actually integrated into games...rather than just some program that works around the game...something like games for windows live but you know...actually works

steam is actually getting close to xbl functionality...the new beta is pretty cool and it's starting to be a really awesome service...for free...the thing that I like about pc is that the mentality is that most things are free and unless games for windows live takes over it'll continue to be like that

[quote]I was pretty much with you til this part. Every single time a thread similar to this comes up (eg. why do X with a console when X is so much better on PC) someone calls console players dumb or ignorant. I just don't get that. I build my own PCs, set up my wireless home network, and I've had damn near every console ever made. So am I still dumb or slightly ignorant? I wish the stereotype of the idiot 10 year old kid would be dropped when someone talks about console gaming....it's just getting really old. Not a personal attack Natty, just sayin'....
[\quote]


totally understandable, no offense taken. ive owned multitude of consoles over the years and still love them all. and i didnt mean to come off as saying all console players are idiots, i mean join a game of counterstrike at any time during the day and references to your sexual preference to racial slur banter is the norm. anonymonity allows for idiocracy sometimes (but thats a different thread).

the point of that statement i made was that console gamers arent dumb (in general) but that they are paying a small premium to be ignorant of the work going on behind the scenes. you buy a game, you put it in and you choose some game online that you want to play in, you join and you play. i have to install the game, update drivers, change settings, sometimes i have to net through different servers, grab ip addresses, and do some command line parameters to get things going properly.

as for paying for updates, i totally do not agree with having to pay for updates. if a customer buys a product that has issues off the rack, its the developers responsibility to give you a product that works under that given cost. charging more to fix a product that was defective off the rack is rediculous. however, this can be a fine line in gaming, as sometimes patches are for enhancements, which could be seen as added value.

I've never seen an update witth a pricetag

I think your missing the fact that PC online gaming is NOT free, someone is paying for the server you play on and since I've paid for several, xbox live is a hell of alot cheaper than say a 24man BF2 ranked server....

I think for the service it provides its worth its 3-4 bucks a month, I enjoy being able to play lag free servers (i rarely if ever hit any) I like the friends list and the ability to see what they are playing at any given time and to jump in the middle of a game aka Gears of War or Crackdown (i mean comon how sweet is it to jump into crackdown)

I'd rather have it done well and charged for than have it be a haphazard afterthought aka sony or wii

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Originally Posted by Recon

I've never seen an update witth a pricetag

I think your missing the fact that PC online gaming is NOT free, someone is paying for the server you play on and since I've paid for several, xbox live is a hell of alot cheaper than say a 24man BF2 ranked server....

I think for the service it provides its worth its 3-4 bucks a month, I enjoy being able to play lag free servers (i rarely if ever hit any) I like the friends list and the ability to see what they are playing at any given time and to jump in the middle of a game aka Gears of War or Crackdown (i mean comon how sweet is it to jump into crackdown)

I'd rather have it done well and charged for than have it be a haphazard afterthought aka sony or wii

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anothe excellent point. it totally slipped my mind that my clan and i are paying ~200 a month for a CSS server, constantly asking for donations and such to keep it alive. meanwhile, at any time, a console player is paying a few bucks a month for access to hundreds of games and their servers.

I think it’s a ripoff in some cases.. ie, I believe online gaming matches should be a part of live silver and be free. Its not like an mmorpg where we are playing on their hosted servers and using valuable bandwidth… most online games, user is the host/server… all the central infrastructure really provides for is matchmaking and ranking which doesn’t take much resources (ie battlenet). That should be just like a normal PC online game where the company provides the matchmaking and ranking resources and players simply browse for other hosts/games. Now I do believe perks like marketplace demos/movies and arcade games should be paid for since they are hosted on m$ servers. now if you are playing on a company hosted/ranked server.. then yes i think you should pay

basically, i think players should be given a choice:
with free/silver, you can play online on P2P matches with minimal matchimaking/anticheat/ranking features and also minimal marketplace support like demos and patches

pay/gold would give you access to hosted and ranked servers which actually use company resources. and also access to advanced marketplace features and add-ons/expansion packs

i shouldnt have to pay just because i want to play with my friend over the internet.. when we are providing 99% of the resources

Given the amount of effort and R&D it takes to make XBL as awesome and well done as it is, why shouldn't you have to pay for it?

You're not providing any resources more than paying for an internet connection you'd already be paying for anyways. You're not developing the technology or providing the hundreds of servers that keep all the data and information centralized.

MS offers a free plan because they _have_ to, to stay relevant. But there's nothing free about it. Sony offers a free service because their service is nowhere near as good as XBL and they need to recover the marketshare.

It's like IE vs Netscape back in the day, with XBL being Netscape and PSN being IE. But unlike Netscape, MS is using the money it makes from XBL to continue improving the service.

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Originally Posted by kpxgq

I think it’s a ripoff in some cases.. ie, I believe online gaming matches should be a part of live silver and be free. Its not like an mmorpg where we are playing on their hosted servers and using valuable bandwidth… most online games, user is the host/server… all the central infrastructure really provides for is matchmaking and ranking which doesn’t take much resources (ie battlenet). That should be just like a normal PC online game where the company provides the matchmaking and ranking resources and players simply browse for other hosts/games. Now I do believe perks like marketplace demos/movies and arcade games should be paid for since they are hosted on m$ servers. now if you are playing on a company hosted/ranked server.. then yes i think you should pay

basically, i think players should be given a choice:
with free/silver, you can play online on P2P matches with minimal matchimaking/anticheat/ranking features and also minimal marketplace support like demos and patches

pay/gold would give you access to hosted and ranked servers which actually use company resources. and also access to advanced marketplace features and add-ons/expansion packs

i shouldnt have to pay just because i want to play with my friend over the internet.. when we are providing 99% of the resources

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This pretty much sums up exactly how I feel bout Live as well, if there were more dedicated servers it would be different, but the majority of games its just the end users acting as a server.

XBOX Live Gold is 100% worth it, it's seemless, it works, and it's easy as hell to use. This is coming from someone who has done tons of online PC gaming for well over ten years starting with Quake 2, and even started playing console games online when the Dreamcast came out.

Steam, and I knew this would happen and I called this to my friends, is becoming the Live of the PC world, and it's a lot better than any other online service on the PC a heck of a lot better.

But live is awesome, I get so tired of the endless headaches of PC gaming, that the only online games on the PC I play anymore are Steam games. Because I know my friends, and I know when they are playing, and I don't have to troubleshoot anything. It used to be 70 percent PC gaming, and 40 percent console, now it's 90 percent console and 10 percent PC. And I don't see that changing anytime soon.

It used to be 110%?

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Originally Posted by MrDigital

It used to be 110%?

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Yeah... and?








Okay it's freaking 6:30, I want to go home and watch the Bucs get beat by the Pats. And down some beers, I've been up since 7am, and I am sitting at my desk twiddling my thumbs, because I have nothing to do but sit by this phone till it rings, and it probably won't. Staying late on Friday = teh suck.