I’m pretty much a total XBL noob. I subscribed several years ago on the original xbox, but never played online with anybody except for a group of friends from college in our weekly game nights where we pretended we were still a bunch of college kids.
So - - - now that I have this neat new console with a friendslist populated primarily with Qt3 people, I’m wondering if there are any “rules” I should know about… are “blind invites” bad form on XBL as they are in a MMO? Should I send somebody a message before inviting to join in a game if I see they’re playing a game that I also own?
I’ve played with teamspeak, etc. so I can’t imagine mic etiquette being any different but I’m mainly wanting to know how to avoid being a Noid unintentionally on XBL… I’m sure my pathetic gaming skills will annoy anybody teamed up with me (or playing against me) well enough as it is.
Can’t imagine anyone being annoyed by a blind invite, and if so they’ll probably just delete it, no big deal. I have no idea about mic etiquette, so maybe I don’t observe it. Didn’t know there was such a thing. But anyway, there’s tons of noobs and/or casual gamers on Live, myself included. Go nuts!
I remember playing my first online match of COD4, and after getting my first 3 kill streak, yelling at my wife “hey jo! i just got 3 kills in a row!!”. yeah, my mic was on. i quickly unhooked my headset to silence the jeers
-Blind invites to friends are okay IMO. I try to give the disclaimer to friends at some point “if you’re busy, just ignore the invite.” That disclaimer usually isn’t necessary for my hardcore friends, as that seems to be the emergent ettiquite. But for friends not savvy on XBL, they seem to feel like they have to type out an excuse for turning me down, and I want them to know that’s not necessary.
-If you sent a friend invite to someone who doesn’t know who you are and what your gamertag is, send them a message telling them who the hell you are. I still get invites from people who I have no idea who they are or where I know them from. Sometimes I find out it’s a close friend whose gamertag I didn’t know. Other times it turns out it really is some random wanker from god knows where.
-If you have ambient noise going on or are holding a conversation with someone else in your room, keep your mic turned off except when you actually want to talk. The only problem I personally run into there is that when I’m juggling conversations w/ online folk and my wife, I’m constantly making that ‘snapping’ noise everyone hears by switching my mic off and on. I hate being that guy, but I don’t know what to do about it.
-Don’t be a douche, unless the scope of your voice chat is only with people you know.
Yeah, that’s one of the things I really like about Xbox Live. It’s very non-invasive. If someone declines, you don’t get a message saying they declined. That might be upsetting. When someone removes you from their friend’s list, you don’t get a message telling you that, they’re just gone from your friends list, which you might or might not notice. Again, very civilized. Same with when someone goes offline. You don’t need to know they went offline. They’re just no longer online if you happen to look at your friends list.
Btw, if you have El Guapo on your friends list, be prepared to be invited to games that you don’t own, or have stopped playing a long time ago. One of these days El Guapo, I swear it, you’ll invite me to GRAW 2 and I’ll actually accept. :)
Correct me if I’m wrong but I didn’t think you could send a message to someone over XBL until they were on your friends list. I’ve always had to accept someone’s invite and ask them who they are after the fact.
I handle most of my invites from the Xbox.com website, and you can do it from there. Plus it’s easier to type in a message on the PC too.
I think it’s also possible on the 360. Once you send the invite, they show up on your friends list as “pending”, and you can select them and send them a message.
If I haven’t invited any of you and you want an xtra XBL friend, shoot me an invite: jpinard
Along the lines of Ryan’s questioning… is it in bad form to ask someone to play a game against (or with) you - if you’re not very good at it (or flat-out terrible)?
Check people’s zones. Usually every zone is good to go no matter how terrible you are, except “professional” or “hardcore” or whatever the “victory or death” zone is, that is for people who want to pimp their rank or something, avoid them unless you have similar goals.
The problem is these damn games that don’t allow us Yanks to play people from other countries. I don’t know offhand how many that is, but I was on a real Mercs 2 jag for a while, and attempted to invite or jump into any open game I saw, but I apparently could only play with other Americans! Is this an EA thing? Could swear I’ve played Carcassonne with Brits before.
In EA’s semi-defense, any time I’ve been grouped with Euros or Aussies in Halo, et al, the experience has been pretty shitty due to excessive lag. It would be nice if they gave you the option of saying ‘fuck it, just let me join and deal with the lag’, though.
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[li]If you are on my friends list, feel free to invite me for anything. If I don’t want to play that right now, I’ll decline. If I don’t want to play with you, I’ll remove you entirely.
[/li][li]Check what people are doing before sending invites. If I’m in the middle of a game of NHL 09 (a likely occurence), I won’t be playing until I’m done. Send me a message to set up a match rather than an invite.
[/li][li]If I really want some multiplayer action, I’ll check for or create a thread here (see NHL 09, for instance) and try to set up some time of get together ahead of time.
[/li][li]Even within my friends list, I have two groups of folks: people I know and everyone else. I’m much more likely to send the latter group a message before an invite.
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[li]If we are playing the same game sure throw an invite.
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[li]If we have played a game within the last like week or two sure throw an invite.
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[li]If we are good friends and have played a lot together over time throw me an invite.
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[li]Other than that message me and ask or if I have responded here about some particular game then throw me an invite.
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Blind invites for games I haven’t played in a year or games I don’t even own are really annoying.
These are good questions, really, and they show you’re above 99% of the XBL players out there.
My general rules:
I generally look at what people are playing before sending them an invite, and also try to remember if I’ve played that game with them before. So if Xaroc is playing Lego Batman and it just came out that day, I’m pretty sure he wants to play that new game right now, rather than Call of Duty 4 MP. If he’s playing Rainbow Six: Vegas, he’s probably just fooling around and might be up for a game. It’s kind of a judgement thing you develop over time.
I wish there were a “you can just ignore this if you don’t want to play” auto message. Sometimes if there are a few of us playing a newish game and we want more people, I invite almost everyone who is online on my list.
Don’t forget to mute your mic while taking a piss break. Or, you know, leave yoru controller on the couch. Sometimes you forget on a Sunday night after a few beers, though. :)
I used to organize big matches here, but no huge multiplayer title has come out in a while. What’s next on the horizon?
