I've been playing some various GTA 4 multiplayer games on Xbox Live lately.  Team Mafia Works is probably my favorite.   The concept of the game is simple, but you need to have decent organization with your teammates to pull it off.  The 360 is a fairly recent purchase, so I've been trying to get a feel for the community.

GTA 4 may not be an entirely fair representation of the Xbox Live community, because as far as I can tell most of the users think they're straight gangsters and fail to realize that they're playing with a toy in their living room.

Team Mafia works is a great concept for GTA.  The idea is that you're on a subset of the overall map (the smaller the better), and you are on a team competing with at least one other team to complete missions that are phoned in to you. Think of it as playing the game against rival gangs and you're on a timer.  It's a lot more frantic, random, and generally a lot more fun than GTA 4 single player.  The concept, that is.

Execution is different.  If you're playing with the right people, it's awesome.  Many of my friends have 360s and GTA 4, so I can create or invite them into games for some multiplayer fun.  They're coherant, they realize they're playing video games on a toy, and they're very fun to play with.  Any time we're together, we dominated the random players because they weren't the least bit organized.  To round out my experience, I played games entirely with strangers.

Xbox Live is completely full of posers.  They're all trying to impress strangers, talking about how they're smoking weed instead of playing (what, are you sixteen?  Is that supposed to be edgy?).  They say some slang, then repeat the word "faggot" or an abbreviation thereof about 15 times in a row, then mouth-breathe into their microphone while they play.  I think this is secret code behavior for "I never had a girlfriend."  Oh, and they all seem to take gaming very, very seriously.  Don't (correctly) refer to the Xbox as  a toy, or they'll take offense.  That's odd, because the Xbox is a toy.

I noticed a lot of people don't even use headsets while playing.  And when I talked to my friends about this, they mostly just shrugged and said they didn't talk much or didn't even bother to wear their headsets while using Xbox Live.  That's kind of a shame. 

Same experience here. Bought it at launch and had it till six months ago aprox.
I was neither too impressed. I don't see what people talk about when saying it is soooo much superior that other online playing. IMHO the biggest difference is that you are paying. The main reason I sold my 360 after fearing the RROD. I thought I'd rebuy it when MS solved the problem but the day seems to never fully arrive and I'm beggining to lose interest by the day. Good old days when evil Gates was at the top. He at least could give away a few goodies in exchange of world domination. Ballmer seems to be much more in the quarter profits rule wagon.


PS Toy? well, I wouldn't get offended, but a machine that's more powerful than many computers could just be referred as a console. I understand your analogy "if you play with it it is a toy" but that would also apply to sexual organs and partners so I guess it is not a perfect analogy. ..

are you kidding me? you actually thought people on xbox live were civil? seriously are you joking?


but really, there are buttholes on every online game out there, the xbox live difference is that they have mics. (which in alot of ways is better too, because you can cuss right back)
Although when you play with good people, the experience is one of the best you can get in an online experience.

EDIT: did you just get a 360? I mean, c mon, you should be used to it by now. (it's not something you wouldn't hear in the real world anyway.)  

I've only had about 4 ultra buttholes play (with, not against me) But alot of other times I had good teams. It all evens out. and also gta4 has probably the most immature community on xbox live, play another game (small matches like 4 vs 4)

play with your friends .

Its an unfortunate fact that most people in this world are babbling idiots.

You use a headset when you have a bunch of friends in the same halo match for example...you make a private chat tho, you don't talk like a retard to everyone like most kids do. I sometimes start team killing if the person won't shut up...

Otherwise xbox live is great if you want to talk some trash to people and if you want to annoy them... When I play guitar hero 3 and I hear the other guy has his headset on, I sing while I play guitar... how annoying is that? :)

People in online multiplayer are nobs. This isn't new and it definitely isn't just on live. Play counter strike on the pc in a public server. Its just as bad if not worse. Just have a backbone and enjoy it for what it is. The Darwin awards.

 rofl. too true.

Yeah xbox live community sucks, well 80% of the people do. I don't get it personally, woohoo you are smack talking a guy/girl from the other side of the planet, good job.

But that's never happened to me before because I never kept my mic on when playing multiplayer and just left the headset on my lap (I plugged it in so I didn't have to hear it coming out of the tv).

Wasn't as bad as PS3 cod4 experience. Me and 2 mates made a clan tag "TRBL" and went into a ground war room together, there was an actual clan in there and one of the people had a mic (the only one) and started smack talking about how they were going to own and blah blah blah blah. Some of them ended up on our team (idiots don't know how to organise clan matches, there were too many of them in the room) and we ended up winning, and surprise surprise top 3 for our team (and the whole match) was me and my mates. What's interesting is the guy kept silent through the next intermission/lobby sequence :)

I'd always thought that clans were always better than a bunch of randoms on a team, guess not.

This is generally the same advise I get from all of my friends.  They simply say that it's not worth playing with strangers, because everyone thinks there some Internet tough guy behind their Xbox. 

Sexual organs serve a purpose beyond entertainment.  The Xbox 360 does not.  It's purely an entertainment device.  It really does boil down to a toy, and people who take offense to that might need to check themselves.  It plays video games.

I guess I was surprised by exactly how bad the Xbox Live community was.  Hell, I'd been doing voice chat in games a long time.  I used to do ventrillo and, before that, Roger Wilco (this was friend-to-friend).  CS included voice chat and initially that community was terrible as well, but I simply assumed CS was CS and attracted those types.  Other games I played attracted far more civil and intelligent players, in general.

I think it has a lot to do with intelligence.  The more articulate people actually capable of understanding exactly what it is they're doing tend to be more fun to play with (they're playing a game, after all, not living the gangsta lifestylz).   They're also more capable at communicating.