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XBox (Games) Games

Xbox Players Are Fed Up With Forced Crossplay Against PC Gamers (theverge.com) 83

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Xbox players are growing increasingly frustrated at being forced to play against PC gamers. While crossplay was initially a popular request from Xbox and PC players that Microsoft has backed strongly for years, those playing first-person shooters on Xbox are struggling to opt out of the experience to avoid PC cheaters. From a report: Games like Call of Duty: Warzone and Halo Infinite force Xbox players to match against PC gamers in a variety of playlists. You don't have to look very far to see why people are angry about it. "Now that cheating in Halo is confirmed on PC, can we have to option to opt out of cross-play?" asked one Reddit post in November, just weeks after the multiplayer version of Halo Infinite launched. "Forced crossplay is a scam by Microsoft," reads another post in Microsoft's Halo Waypoint forums. "Forced crossplay is a mistake," says another Redditor, and the list goes on, and on, and on.

Halo Infinite and Call of Duty: Warzone are both suffering from an influx of cheating, largely because they're free-to-play titles so it's easy for hackers to create a new account following a ban. While there's an option to disable crossplay in Warzone, if you try to load into a playlist on Xbox it will ask you to re-enable it. Whereas on PlayStation you can simply dismiss the prompt and continue to the playlist with crossplay still disabled. Warzone players on Xbox have been complaining about this forced crossplay for more than a year, with various forum posts and YouTube videos highlighting how irritating it is to be forced into crossplay. Most of the issues are related to PC cheaters, who have plagued Warzone for years before Activision finally added a new anti-cheat system in October with a kernel-level driver to catch PC cheaters. Now that cheaters are already ruining Halo Infinite multiplayer games, the call to remove forced crossplay is certainly growing louder.
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Xbox Players Are Fed Up With Forced Crossplay Against PC Gamers More

Xbox Players Are Fed Up With Forced Crossplay Against PC Gamers

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  • And Xbox players are sore about it. The cheating thing feels like a convenient excuse for the fact that PC players have better controls and a more professional level of play. Xbox cross players were never going to keep up.

    • RE: PC players will always win (Score:4, Interesting)

      by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @05:04PM (#62165205)

      While I'm an avid PC gamer I couldnt disagree more with you. Cheating in competitive shooters (probably the most common games for cross play) is rampant on PC to the point where I no longer have any interest in playing them.

      Yes, PC players will always have an edge in this context because a mouse and keyboard is just a better input for a shooter. I certainly cant blame console gamers though for not wanting the hack filled shitfest that is PC online gaming coming to their console.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        While I'm an avid PC gamer I couldnt disagree more with you. Cheating in competitive shooters (probably the most common games for cross play) is rampant on PC to the point where I no longer have any interest in playing them.

        Same here. There is the odd game where what you try suddenly works and you get to see you actually have some skills. But the next one again has a ton of no-skill cheaters on it that just completely ruin the experience.

        Personally, I want people to have to sign up with their real-world ID and once caught, ideally being moved to cheater-only servers that decent people do not get assigned to. Let them back after, say, 3 months. Then things may be fun again for the rest of us that do not dream of being fake "su

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Console players cheat too. There was a moment some years ago in the Goldeneye speedrunning community where a player admitted that they stuck tape on their TV screen and drew a crosshair on it in felt tip pen. Helps with aiming. When one admitted it, a dozen more did too, and they just decided to allow it because all the top players were doing it.

        Auto-fire is another common "cheat" on consoles. Also using accessibility features like being able to zoom in on the screen (enhances sniper scopes etc). People hav

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        While I'm an avid PC gamer I couldnt disagree more with you. Cheating in competitive shooters (probably the most common games for cross play) is rampant on PC to the point where I no longer have any interest in playing them.

        Yes, PC players will always have an edge in this context because a mouse and keyboard is just a better input for a shooter. I certainly cant blame console gamers though for not wanting the hack filled shitfest that is PC online gaming coming to their console.

        Sorry but PC cheating is nowhere near that prolific.

        In fact it's harder now than it used to be as you can't just run an aimbot you downloaded, you need to run the cheaters program which is often more invasive than the anti-cheat programs it's trying to avoid... and you're paying for the cheat.

        The fact is, a gamepad can't ever be as fast or accurate as a mouse (keyboard not withstanding, it's all the mouse). Anyone who's run a Xbox controller on their PC will know that. However it's easier to claim that the

        • Sorry but PC cheating is nowhere near that prolific.

          This weekend, I jumped on COD and the first game I played, I was killed by a guy using wireframes and shooting me through the wall, and the second guy killed me with a headshot from a sniper rifle without even going ADS. Cheating is so incredibly rampant that I don't even want to play these games anymore.

          • How do you know he used wireframes, and that you not simply have been on a spot that is a common death trap?

            I used to play DoD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Defeat). As soon as you know the map you know where players are hiding. You see one at spot A moving direction D, you only have to wait until he glances out of the window W. And then he will either crawls below the window, stand left or right of the window: and you shot him through the wall. As both a machine gun and a sniper rifle: actually do

            • How do you know he used wireframes, and that you not simply have been on a spot that is a common death trap?

              Because the kill cam was all wireframes. They can't even be bothered to hide their cheating.

              No idea what ADS is supposed to mean.

              ADS = Aiming Down Sights. He got a headshot on me hip firing a sniper rifle at distance. I don't know how you think there is any skill involved in that.

              • Because the kill cam was all wireframes. They can't even be bothered to hide their cheating.
                That could be a graphics glitch on your side.

                ADS = Aiming Down Sights. He got a headshot on me hip firing a sniper rifle at distance. I don't know how you think there is any skill involved in that.
                How do you come to the utterly stupid idea that I think there is any skill involved in that? Try to word your words so that they do not come over as an insult. Unless you deliberately want to insult me.

                Depending on distance

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          Here's an article from PC Gamer apologizing for PC cheaters being brought to console https://www.pcgamer.com/on-beh... [pcgamer.com]

          Here's an article from Forbes of all places talking about cheating being a huge problem in PC gaming https://www.forbes.com/sites/n... [forbes.com]

          And here's a bunch more articles on this very subject
          https://www.theverge.com/2020/... [theverge.com]
          https://www.theguardian.com/ga... [theguardian.com]
          https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgam... [reddit.com]

          It's a problem.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Revek ( 133289 )
      Agreed, no console player can compete with a PC players superior interface.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Xbox cross players were never going to keep up.

      Xbox supports mouse and keyboard as well. Been that way for years now. Not just for accessibility, but for actual gaming. Games do have to support it, but I would expect most do at this point in time.

      it's really about cheating, as well as convenience because consoles are usually attached to TVs and couch, so while mouse and keyboard are supported by the Xbox, it's less convenient to play. There were supposedly wireless keyboards and mice for couch gaming as wel

    • Agreed. Every lobby of Vanguard and Warezone I join, I'm always accused on cheating when my score's 2-3x higher than the next player, and my team is entirely console players. Most of the time I'm brought down by console team members, and PC players tend to carry the teams. Also console players constantly use tactical game chat for constant casual conversation. They do not use team/friend chat groups outside of the game and it ruins ability to communicate tactfully if half the team has to get muted. Make it

    • At least on Halo Infinite, controller players often have the advantage with a very heavy aim assist that mouse users don't get to enjoy. Obviously that goes out the window when the mouse user has some kind of aim bot or whatever the hell they do to cheat these days, but in the Halo/Xbox group forums it seems to be common opinion that controller players have the advantage due to this aim assist for controller players.

    • I stopped playing online games 20 years ago because of cheating. It really just stopped making the games fun to play, because there will always be some guy with a hacked character that moves 5x the speed of everyone else, or takes a good shot without hurting them. Only for you to now had given away your position and you die every few seconds.

      I am not a sore looser, I never expected to win the online games, however I would like to enjoy actually playing the game and making some progress vs being a target of

    • They should make an XBox keyboard then.

  • The wording kinda sucks. P.S. opt-in vs opt-out (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cloud.pt ( 3412475 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @04:49PM (#62165151)

    There are indeed more cheaters on the PC ecosystem for obvious reasons related with the ease of running multiple apps and no scrutiny of a curated store. But the real reason first-person shooters don't work well with crossplay is very simple: a mouse. Everybody knows this and there's not aim-assist that companies can ship which will fix this, without making Xbox players the cheaters themselves.

    PC crossplay should be opt-in instead of the default. There's a solution for you that solves the problem tout de suite.

    • I used to think like this, but now I regularly find controller players -- using PCs even -- who can play high-level Overwatch. Certain things that demand precision movement (not aim) seem to be challenging for them still, but it is largely just a case of not playing e.g. Lucio.

      Decades of development on aim assist techniques seem to finally be paying off. Am I going to switch? No, because obviously the mouse is still a more precise tool. However, I no longer have any assumptions when I see a controller playe

    • But the real reason first-person shooters don't work well with crossplay is very simple: a mouse.

      Easily disproven, take Star Wars Squadrons for example. This sounds like regurgitated PCMR feel-good theory, from before cross play was available, and PC gamer changed "won't" to "don't" like they know something.

      Thought experiment: give a console game a good mouse experience, entirely fix PC cheating.
      Console gamers will still have a reason to turn off PC cross play, to filter out PC try-hards, and you all know it.

      Now that cross play is available, and actual console gamers have experienced it in a variety o

      • Only Squadrons is not the type of FPS I meant and you know it. It is first person, and there is indeed shoting involved. But moving the mouse or analog stick has a delay due to the associated, realistic ship movement.

        In contrast, a standard FPS where characters move and shoot other characters on foot still allows for virtually unlimited speed which only depends on mouse sensitivity, acceleration and ultimately people's hand movement. And the amount of people who are ultra-proficient in these games with a mo

        • (deaths don't really matter as a metric for comparing aim).

          For many reasons.

          Counting deaths introduces a sampling bias due to the rulesets and gameplay of these fps games. In Counterstrike, everyone on the team has a role to play, and the role of Entry Fragger doesnt lend itself to high survival rates, so when sampling you either ignore deaths are go down the death spiral of trying to account for bias.

        • I know you meant FPS games. I gave you a good example of a game harmed by PC cross play that is not an FPS, where the mouse is not an advantage, because you're sort of blaming the mouse. Problems with the PC gaming community affect ALL genres, because it's not all about the mouse.

          Squadrons makes it plain as day, the problem is not the mouse, or people playing the game as it was meant to be played with a mouse and keyboard, it's cheats, keyboard macros, and all the elitist git gud snob players, that for -

          • I have put it together. Those statistics are very biased for PC gaming folks being mostly millenials who have naturally grew tired of gaming in general, but more so for complex, nuanced PC gaming. Consoles are just much more accessible and casual. Which is the exact same reason that new generations are averse to WASD+mouse use, having a propensity to touch screens and controllers.

            All in all this is actually an argument in your favour, where it does make more sense to prioritise console gaming and "console w

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      You can use keyboard and mouse on an Xbox to play Halo. The matching system looks for players with the same setup too.

      • indeed, but most console users don't do it, they don't even set their consoles for near-screen use let alone have an extra keyboard and mouse lying around dedicated to consoles.

  • It's "PC Master race" after all, eh?

    /me ducks and runs...

    • It's "PC Master race" after all, eh? /me ducks and runs...

      A community and general attitude that drives casual PC gamers away from online PC gaming? Gee, you might be on to something there!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Ir naby it's the type of games, personally I like co-op games more than campetative ones, I'll take the example of Snowrunner, beople comming in from other gaming communities often comment on how friendly end helpful Snowrunner players are, and while that may ir may not be true, my experience says it is, There is one big reason for it: all players in the coop session gets equal amounts of money, xp and all upgrades/wihecles so there us no incentive to screw anyone over to get stuff for yourself, in fact
  • Who cares really ?

  • Way back when Diablo 1 was new, I tried my hand at playing multi-player under Battle.Net.
    I learned very quickly playing with other people around the world was an exercise in grief and frustrations. From the rampant cheating to the player-killers, I quickly swore off playing on-line games with other people.
    I dipped my toe into the on-line with other people games lately and I see nothing has changed...

    • Hey if that was you I PK'd on day 1 right after we killed the butcher, sorry.

      • (seriously, i was going through a lot of shit and not dealing with it well. i regretted it forever.)

        • Humorously enough, that was where I encountered my first PKer.
          After that it was deeper in the dungeons (in the Hell regions IIRC) and after that, I ran across a cheater giving away "Plate of the Whale" and after *that* I gave up and went back to offline play.

    • Re:A pointless post (Score:4, Funny)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @05:31PM (#62165293)

      and I see nothing has changed

      That's not true at all. Now you can HEAR the pre-teen kid talking about how they are going to teabag your mom later, instead of only being able to enjoy toxic assholes via text chat.

      • Ha, indeed, behold progress...

      • Also how all the pre-teens tell all the other player's are gay or whatever such rubbish.

        It get to the point on BF4 where you swap squads to stop listening to pre-teen who has a loud and abusive mouth, that or you turn the sound off for the whole game if you can't swap squads.

        You also see the cheater who are low level players yet with massive kill/die ratio. The other day I got shot with a pistol from some level 5 player who was on the other side of the map, so I checked out his stats and he was on a 73 kill

      • With the latest games, that pe-teen is now standing in the room with you, until you take off your vr goggles.

        The fact that his avatar was a giant penis doesnt help matters.
    • This is my experience as well. It's just a waste of my time and money get involved in this crap.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      I've been playing Elder Scrolls Online since Beta and the couple of times cheating was discovered they quickly closed the loop holes. Try it. You may appreciate the technical aspects/calculations of fights/buffs and stuff.

      • Till you solo queue for a dungeon a few times, get vote kicked during the loading screen because an elitist turd doesn't like your stats or class, then the game itself punishes you with some leaver debuff like it's your fault other players abuse the matchmaking system to screen for players they want.

        It's a great MMO except for all the other people playing it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by k0t0n ( 7251482 )
      I had a totally different experience, somehow I joined some guild (Obsidian Order), they gifted me cool gear, and we made a few runs before I lost focus and moved on. It's an early gaming memory that I treasure. But whether in game or in the real world, nothing changes about what to expect from the general public.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      Well in the mid/late 1990s@ a lor of players where still on dialup which may have created extra frustrations with horrible ping disconnect etc which might not have helped thing at all, but yea toxic people are toxic no matter the type of connection

  • I called it. I predicted exactly this; that after years of clamoring for server-side equality against PC users, Xbox users would finally get it and then nearly immediately regret it, as they realize the hard facts that you can't FPS for shit with joystick aim.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suutar ( 1860506 )

      Regardless of that it was inevitable. The subset of xbox players who vocally wanted crossplay is not the same subset who now vocally don't want forced crossplay. It should have been opt-in from the beginning.

  • Either Git Gud or Get The Fuck Out.
    I do not know about this cheating issues people keep running into. I got into one cheat match once while I was still playing MCC. The issue with that game is that no one wanted to play it, just game the system. Never ran into anything in Halo 6.
    Never really had an issues with cheats on the PC
    Now the PS3 was a different story. Each and every online game on that system was hacked to shit.

    • I've run into a few suspicious players in Infinite. I think they mostly stay in SWAT or Ranked modes. If you don't play those modes you may not have seen many. And of course sometimes it's hard to tell cheaters versus good players. Theater mode can help with that but the interface for using theater is very rough and buggy. Nobody's got time for that.

      I am sympathetic to Xbox players having to deal with cheaters but not if their "solution" is to cut crossplay. I'm a PC player and for me that "solution" doesn'

      • Ahh. The 2 modes I don't like cause it is filled with try hards who take it too seriously. Explains the cheating.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suutar ( 1860506 )

      That is in a nutshell what they want - to get out. Well spotted!

    • Either Git Gud or Get The Fuck Out.
      I do not know about this cheating issues people keep running into. I got into one cheat match once while I was still playing MCC. The issue with that game is that no one wanted to play it, just game the system.

      This is why other PC gamers avoid online PC gaming.

  • The anti-vaxxers want the freedom to crossplay with everyone while the responsible people want them segregated out of polite society because our lives are being ruined.

  • "Cheating" (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by negated ( 981743 )

    Translation: My opponent has a mouse and keyboard and I have this controller which is not at all optimal, even with aim assist (actual cheating) for first person shooters, anything that rewards precision, etc.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You've been downvoted by an XBox controller user who lost to a noob with a mouse from a PC.

  • I find it priceless that these complaints about cheating come from people who have auto-aim built right into their version of the game from the start.

    • The "auto-aim" you're talking about on consoles is not auto aim, it's an aim assist, and it gets in the way more often than it helps because your point of aim moves unpredictability. Think lane departure system tugging on your wheel - on a race track. It's not steering, and you'd wish it on your opponents if you had any skill. That is what aim assist is, you actually have to turn it off to play competitively.

  • I've played on PC and now on console. Definitely harder to do well on console but still fun. Weird to see such a divide with players but I can tell you for certain that there is significant cheating. Not every game. Not every PC player. BUT there are definitely a ton of losers that have nothing better to do than dunk on people using wall hacks or aimbots. It's pathetic and true. The fault here lies with 343i not doing enough. No report system. No kill cam. Poor anti-cheat. Playing on XSX I agree that we nee
  • I just played through fallout 4 using a gamepad on my PC so I could sit back while I was playing it and it was a completely different and much more difficult experience. It constantly felt like I was fumbling with my gun in a way that was a keyboard and mouse it never did. Headshots weren't something I can just do on a whim. It actually made the game a bit more fun and chaotic in a lot of ways. But it wasn't PVP so that's all good and it was fallout 4 so by level seven I was basically God incarnate.

    Year

    • In general, competitive games turn me off. It's just so toxic in general. Even in some coop games the size of the trolling community can be large enough to ruin the fun. In PvP games I think the rules most players use are, based upon experience of reading forums: If I win it was because of skill. If you win it is because you cheated, or the devs hate our side and our class, or the game is bad and I'm only hanging out here because my favorite game server is down.

      As for controllers, I got one recently, a

  • Jeesh I've been playing these games forever. Used to use KALI as an IPX wrapper to play them on dialup. If you're old enough to know what that is, you can probably garner my opinion is well formed.

    With online play, you either get an unpopular game with a tight nit community that is too boring for cheaters to pester with. Unfortunately you end up playing the same 30 people or so. At least that was my experience with Descent. (Looking at you Kiln, Birdseye) Awesome community, but when it starts to peter ou

    • There was a few good BF4 servers that were dedicated to people getting certain assignments, ie everyone took turns dying to rack up their scores to get the achievement weapon etc. But when there was no admin online the knobs turned up and just fuck up the game for everyone until no-one wanted to play that server.

    • Cool!
      I also played Decent via KALI!
      But with keyboard only, extended keyboard with a numpad to the right, one that actually could feed 8 or ore key presses simultaneously to the game.

  • I'm pretty sure top PC gamers would beat top console gamers any day....

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yes, obviously. If only because they've got 3x the framerate on twice the resolution and an order of magnitude less display lag, better, faster controls, etc.

      But when gamers get pwned they cry "cheating!" That's just how gamers work.

  • a new anti-cheat system in October with a kernel-level driver

    Because that sounds like a really good idea. Count me out.

  • I will never again play a multiplayer game where my "stuff" can be stolen from me by some random asshole who is either cheating or has nothing better to do all day than play. Plenty of co-op PVE games that I can use to entertain myself or with my friends.

    Multiplayer-only games can piss right off. People suck, in RL and online.

  • Computers with modest specs will always perform faster than consoles. - check
    Interface is generally better on computer than consoles. - check
    Most twits don't even know their TVs do independent post processing adding another 250ms lag most of the time. Users don't turn it to 'game mode'. - check

    I know cheating is a thing...but the vast majority of people accused of it probably aren't. Consoles have three major disadvantages that just make it appear anybody on computer is cheating. :)

  • They should be complaining about having to pay additionally to play on-line, when those costs were traditionally sunk into the price of the game.
  • Since time immemorial, players worse than you are n00bs and players better than you are cheaters.

  • I doubt it has anything to do with cheating.

    Playing on a real computer with a real mouse and a real keyboard is simply absolutely superior to having a silly console input device.

    With a PC I toast anyone playing on any console, I do not need a cheat for that.

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