Profiles Suck

General and high profile video game topics.
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VideoGameCritic
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Profiles Suck

Postby VideoGameCritic » March 6th, 2015, 11:23 am

When Xbox Live came to be the notion of "profiles" was born.  These were unique to each user and necessary to identify users for online play.  Having your personal information (and credit card) store in "the cloud" is not a good idea but it was a necessary evil.

Well, with today's systems that go online as default, the profiles have become an ever-present pain-in-the-ass even if you're playing offline.

In the old days, if you wanted to play a fighting game, you just picked up the controller and started playing.  If you earned a high score, you entered your initials.

Now whenever someone picks up a controller he's asked to sign into a profile.  Creating a new profile or linking to an old one is an onerous procedure, so most of my friends opt for "player 1" or whatever generic guest account is available.  If you have four players, it's an absolute nightmare.

But there's no longer a concept of a high score screen.  Now the information is tucked away into the individual profiles.  If you want to see how you compare, you can go online to learn you are ranked 84,234 among players in the western hemisphere.  

This is another unintended consequence of the online-centric consoles.  A lot of aspects of the game that should have remained local are forced into the online model.

Playing a fighting game like Guilty Gear Xrd (PS4), or even Street Fighter IV is a lot less enjoyable due to this garbage.



ptdebate1
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Profiles Suck

Postby ptdebate1 » March 6th, 2015, 11:33 am

I think the concern this is trying to address is that without being signed into your live profile, you can't make progress toward achievements. If you are signed in, you can earn achievements even if you're playing local multiplayer on someone else's game.

My brother and I have never had any issues with this because as soon as I (or any other of his friends) sit down in front of the console, the kinect sees us and signs us in a automatically. It "knows" who's playing what controller without our input because it's...well...a motion-tracking camera.

Critic, you've mentioned having trouble with profiles and Xbox One multiplayer. Are you sure the kinect is set up properly? Because in my humble experience, they've made this all a heck of a lot easier than it ever was on the 360.

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Profiles Suck

Postby VideoGameCritic » March 6th, 2015, 4:52 pm

I don't have the Xbox One camera.  I think it's kind of creepy.

ActRaiser1
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Profiles Suck

Postby ActRaiser1 » March 6th, 2015, 5:19 pm

Personally, IMHO I kind of dig the idea of profiles.  At least in regards to being able to check out what others have done on leaderboards and achievements.

It was awesome to see Leo absolutely kill me in every single achievement on Midway Origins except for two.  Two that I destroyed him on, mind you.  That was pretty freaking awesome.  

And I could also look at the leaderboards for Geometry Wars and see that among our little social circle on the Critics site, I had the highest score.  Yep, that's my little loan claim to fame no one else cares about but me.

But I can totally see how having multiple guys over and messing around with profiles is a pain.  We deal with that every week with 4 360s and 5-8 guys for our weekly Halo lan games.  Now, factor in Digital Rights management and then it becomes even more painful with map packs and such.

So, it's a two edged sword.  You win some; you lose some.  Eventually, you'll get everyone to have their own profile and things will settle down.  Or just create a variety of goofy ones and let them pick from a list.  There are other ways to help solve this issue.

ptdebate1
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Profiles Suck

Postby ptdebate1 » March 6th, 2015, 6:48 pm

[QUOTE=videogamecritic]I don't have the Xbox One camera.  I think it's kind of creepy.[/QUOTE]

I saw that you've reviewed several kinect games for the 360--was it something specific about the kinect for xbox one?

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Profiles Suck

Postby VideoGameCritic » March 6th, 2015, 7:45 pm

Yeah I didn't care for its always-on-always-listening "feature".

ptdebate1
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Profiles Suck

Postby ptdebate1 » March 6th, 2015, 8:01 pm

[QUOTE=videogamecritic]Yeah I didn't care for its always-on-always-listening "feature".[/QUOTE]

Hmm. I don't know what that means in practice, but the Kinect does work really well for its intended purposes. It certainly beats having to type in your Live password whenever you want to sync your save data and achievement progress or go online with your profile on a friend's Xbox. The motion controls are also decidedly impressive. 

HardcoreSadism1
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Profiles Suck

Postby HardcoreSadism1 » March 6th, 2015, 10:46 pm

Profiles only suck if you don't care about the very people -in your house- messing with content on your hard drive?

Ok then hah.

Vexer1
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Profiles Suck

Postby Vexer1 » March 7th, 2015, 12:03 am

I find the notion of it being creepy to be extremely silly to say the least.

ZetaX1
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Profiles Suck

Postby ZetaX1 » March 7th, 2015, 10:16 am

You should be able to opt-out of either or both (profiles and achievments.) If everyone who wants to play a local multiplayer game needs a profile, it's a big 'ole pain when new people come over, unless you just make generic guest profiles. And achievements...if you need to "game the game" in order to get enough enjoyment out of it, then the game probably wasn't fun enough to begin with.


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