Playing with Sore Losers

I’ve had precious little online time this week, as some of you have noticed. I’m going on vacation next week for the first time in years and, of course, everything picked this week to blow up in my face. I love you, too, universe. Just let me enjoy my kayaking next week and we’ll call it square ;)

I chose to do something stupid with today’s precious online time. I chose to race a little in Hydro Thunder to ease my stress. And achievement whore. I know, I know. Today’s exercise was a definite smack in the head to remind me to do something productive instead. I’m reviewing HT (spoiler: I like it) but I hate publishing reviews when it’s not truly the final version of the game. Yes, I had the whole game and there were no day one patches, but the online matchmaking was pretty non-existent before release. Makes sense, I know, since only a fraction of the Live population had access to the game, but I wanted to see how that system was going to work when the masses had at it. Answer: not well. Glad I waited to test it out. That, however, has little impact on where I’m going with this.

Dear fellow Hydro Thunder Racers,

Kicking me because I kicked your ass by 3-20 seconds teaches you nothing. Following me around would be a much better strategy so you can see what I know that you don’t. Sending me nasty messages calling me a cheater/hax0r is annoying or hilarious, depending on how clever you are. Man, who is a big enough weenie to cheat at a Live Arcade game?

Thanks,
Jenn

ps: lrn2play. Racing with a Novice boat up against Expert class vehicles is asking to get your ass kicked 90% of the time, shortcuts and proper boosting be damned. Not that you did those latter things anyway.

Oy. It’s a miracle I got to finish 10 online races at all. Half of the hosts would quit after they’d see how far ahead I was at a checkpoint and then all of us get booted to the main menu. This happens to me a lot, sadly, and doesn’t matter the game. I always feel bad for the other people in that situation, especially in Hydro Thunder since their present matchmaking system is a little bit of a joke. It’s also unforgivably slow. Every kick, every time the host bails (I admit that I’m paranoid about these things and it’s totally possible that people just have crappy connections. Used to happen to me all the time, which was why I never hosted!), every time the room fills up while I am in the process of joining the session, you go back to the main MP menu. Then you have to search for games again in what is the slowest lobby I’ve experienced in the last two years, easy. Quick Match is really the only way to go and that still feels tedious. We’re racers, Vector Unit, we want to do things quickly!

Usually I just ignore the mean messages on Live. What’s the point? I leave bad feedback when warranted and go from there. This past play session there was only one person that messaged me and, I don’t know what hit me, but I wrote back. That’s when I thought I’d write this post, just to vent a little. I was never going to release the other person’s tag; one dick move does not deserve another. Besides, I already won. Then, pretty much right after I responded, they wrote back to me again. Gotta say, I didn’t see that happening. Though Xbox Live doesn’t let you save sent messages, I save them anyway, so now I can show a transcript:

7/29/2010 7:03 PM
funny how u jump 10ft in air every race .... friggin canada leave cheat

Getting called a cheater always sucks; no idea why Canada was important there. Also, I wasn’t the host and the guy that DID bail I left negative feedback on. I can only assume they thought I was host since I was in first position on the board, sorted by point tally.

lol. I’m a reviewer; had the game a while. Use an expert boat and boost before&on the ramp. Jump JUST before the end of the ramp for wicked air. Not always helpful, btw. I’ve blown up on ceilings&walls a lot!! Do the ring courses for shortcuts.

7/29/2010 8:29 PM
lol dove sei? scusa i start play an new to it.. <3 it ciao bambina

7/29/2010 8:33 PM
the duck quacks me up

Glad you enjoy it! They did a good job with Hydro Thunder; very fun. Too bad about the music though, eh? Gets sooo boring after a while.

And then, much later:

7/29/2010 9:07 PM
grazie tips help lots ciaooo

This was oddly gratifying, considering they started off calling me a cheater. I'm not going to start responding to every dink on Live, of course, and an apology would have been nicer, but I can certainly get by with this as a conclusion.

As a random question, what does it mean when you view someone's profile on Live and see 'This player has not earned any achievements yet' and 'This player has not played any games yet' and their gamerscore is over 14k? Their avatar shows up perfectly and I can message them, but everything else is hidden. If this is a new privacy feature, that's kinda cool. I've only had that happen with a few people. It's usually people who were super pissed when I beat them and I guess they did the Live equivalent of blocking me. Mwa ha ha. At least that saves me from running into them again :)

ps: managing wordpress from a phone is a serious PITA.

Tagged as: 360, gaming, rant