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Xbox One Adds New Achievement, Do Not Disturb Features In Previous Update (gamespot.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-and-shiny dept.

A Preview alpha build is now available for some Xbox One users who take part in the Insiders Program, which allows players to test out new system and game features before they go live to the public. This build contains several new features, such as the Next Achievements feature and a Do Not Disturb feature. GameSpot reports: The biggest addition coming for Xbox Insiders is the Next Achievements feature in the guide. Now, those who test new features and games from Xbox One will be able sort a cross-games list of upcoming Achievements. This way, you can easily see which Achievements you're closest to and quickly launch the game to achieve them. You can also sort your Achievements by how rare they are.

There are also a few tweaks to social settings. A Do Not Disturb online status is coming, which will suppress notifications and let your friends know you're unavailable at the moment. Comments on community posts are also getting an adjustment, and soon you'll be able to peek at the most recent comment and see who has liked your comments. The Narrator is also now able to read large amounts of text.

38 comments

  1. Re:Microsoft's XBox is dead by seinman · · Score: 1

    Mine was, but I replaced the hard drive and now it's as good as new.

  2. Re:Microsoft's XBox is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Has this been confirmed by Netcraft?

  3. people still care about achievements? by known_coward_69 · · Score: 2

    WTF is the point of them other than to make you feel good? I just kind of ignore them when I play something

    1. Re:people still care about achievements? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I used to be really enthusiastic about them, but nowadays I mosty play out of fun, occasionally I boot up a game because I want to unlock an achivement, but it has become rare.

    2. Re: people still care about achievements? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you had any friends you might play games with those friends, and if you did that you might enjoy chasing achievements with or vs said friends as a means of competition or goal setting. Lot of ifs I know...

    3. Re:people still care about achievements? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People still care about bitching about achievements?

      In the *rare* case that I actually want to meet one, it's because that particular one is a challenge that I want to best. So yes, people still care.

    4. Re:people still care about achievements? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

      WTF is the point of them other than to make you feel good?

      The point is to make you play the game more and want to play more games. It's a form of psychological validation which people very much want. If you analyze what they are then you can undermine your desire for them but that can also be quickly undone when you see what you are lacking.

      It's neurohacking to get people to spend money on games, so why would they ever stop doing it?

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    5. Re:people still care about achievements? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      WTF is the point of them other than to make you feel good? ,

      Why shouldn't that be the point? Isn't that the reason you play games in the first place?

    6. Re:people still care about achievements? by fincher69 · · Score: 1

      A lot of times I see them as just an add-on to the experience. There have been games I've really enjoyed and wished there was more once I completed the normal story items. After that, it can be fun to have a list of additional things to try to accomplish after the developer-built pieces are complete.

    7. Re:people still care about achievements? by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 1

      Especially for those under 21 it is a legal high, actual dopamine fix for something accomplished. It's drugs without the drugs.

    8. Re:people still care about achievements? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      Earlier Xbox games could have used some better guidance or standards regarding distribution of points. Some games, like Enchanted Arms or King Kong, basically just gave you 1000 points spread out over the course of the main story. A little too easy, unless you're collecting points for their own sake. Other games like Blue Dragon were notoriously stingy, only giving you a paltry 150 points or so after beating the game which may have taken dozens of hours. The rest of the points were locked away behind ridiculously grindy tasks that didn't seem much like fun to me.

      I've been playing through the Halo Master Chief collection recently, and they seems to have struck a good balance in that game, with lots of small achievements you expect to get for normal playthrough, but also fun achievements for doing interesting things, beating mission par times, and so on.

      Gamerscore is one of Microsoft's simpler but more brilliant ideas. It's a nice psychological payoff with minimal costs of development, and the fact that it's been copied by other platforms demonstrates how well such a simple concept works in practice. I don't fuss about it too much, but I admit I enjoy seeing achievements popping up, and knowing my gamerscore is going up. It's hard to explain why it's as rewarding as it is, but it just works.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    9. Re:people still care about achievements? by Wulf2k · · Score: 1

      The concept of achievements could be interesting if most of them hadn't just become a checklist of things to do.

      God of War 1, for example, had an achievement for dying enough to be offered Easy mode, but didn't have an achievement for beating it on any of the harder difficulties.

      Like everything in gaming it was watered down for mass appeal.

    10. Re:people still care about achievements? by nasch · · Score: 1

      It's really fun to get achievements in Overwatch. Every character has two achievements specific to that hero, and you get a "spray" for unlocking them (you can paint a picture on a surface in the game when playing as that hero). Some are fairly easy and some are really hard. I also like that it will show you what percentage of players have unlocked that achievement.

    11. Re:people still care about achievements? by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Earlier Xbox games could have used some better guidance or standards regarding distribution of points. Some games, like Enchanted Arms or King Kong, basically just gave you 1000 points spread out over the course of the main story. A little too easy, unless you're collecting points for their own sake. Other games like Blue Dragon were notoriously stingy, only giving you a paltry 150 points or so after beating the game which may have taken dozens of hours. The rest of the points were locked away behind ridiculously grindy tasks that didn't seem much like fun to me.

      I've been playing through the Halo Master Chief collection recently, and they seems to have struck a good balance in that game, with lots of small achievements you expect to get for normal playthrough, but also fun achievements for doing interesting things, beating mission par times, and so on.

      Microsoft gives 1000 points to "full games" and 150 points for "arcade games". At least that was the rule at first. It was up to the developer to decide how to divvy up those points. Some saw it as an annoyance and just sprinkled them however, others saw it as a challenge and made people work for them.

      It's also something that people found interesting, because it was rapidly copied by everyone else - Sony with their trophies (it came out long after the PS3 was out, and the Xbox 360 had achievements from the get-go), Valve with Steam, even /. has achievements (as part of an april fool's update, but it's still around), and naturally, iOS, Android and everyone else added them.

      Sometimes there's nice goals to try to achieve, other times they can reveal game content you might've missed the first time through or some weirder ones. Gone Home, for example , gives you 100 points for completing the game, but the other 900 are only available if you do odder things you might not have thought of, or if you weren't as careful and missed items.

    12. Re:people still care about achievements? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WTF is the point of them other than to make you feel good? I just kind of ignore them when I play something

      WTF is the point of games other than to make you feel good?

    13. Re:people still care about achievements? by _merlin · · Score: 1

      In some games, they let you know about content you can otherwise miss. For example Psychonauts has a bunch of triggered events that you can miss if you just push through the game as fast as possible, and the achievements let you know that you've seen them. In the Steam version of Canabalt, there are achievements to let you know you've seen the entirety of the rearmost scrolling parallax layer.

  4. previous? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    How can they add something in a previous update?

  5. Are firmware "updates" now optional? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can it also block the forced firmware updates, which prevent one from playing the games every single time one turns on the machine?

    1. Re:Are firmware "updates" now optional? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you ever have anything better to do than sit your fat lard ass down in front of your childish game console? Get a life, get a job. When was the last time you smelled fresh air you dimwitted basement dweller.

    2. Re:Are firmware "updates" now optional? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is quite the reverse; when one does not use the console daily or even monthly, every single time one turns the device on it requires a long sequence of forced updates, EULA agreements and store logins. And not a single time the updates have provided anything useful, they have usually just removed features or at most, re-randomized the UI gadget locations and names.

  6. Hey guys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Im g4y, but Im not a g4y n1gg3r
    thanks

    1. Re: Hey guys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But you l0v3 n1gg3r d1ck in your 4ss!!

  7. God really? by ledow · · Score: 1

    A "sort by percent" column for achievements and a flag to silence notifications.

    Are these really release notes for a big "preview" update, or did someone accidentally pull in two tiny little repo summaries for minuscule patches?

    It gets me that people think this qualifies as a feature, especially given that almost every other achievement-based list on similar services lets you do this (hell, it's splatted over the front of my Steam profile for the first, and is a one-tick option box for the latter - and has been for... what? Possibly 10 years or more?).

    1. Re:God really? by TheCastro1689 · · Score: 1

      I'm on the inside program and my xbox has shown large achievement previews for a while. So I'm not sure what this change even is, unless it's a dedicated achievement pane instead of popping up as a screen saver. I do agree that this is a pretty pointless new update, but then again only the headline showed up and I had to click it to read the body.

  8. Re:Microsoft's XBox is dead by supremebob · · Score: 2

    I don't know, man... The new XBox One X is pretty slick. It's pretty much impossible to build a gaming PC with that much graphics horsepower for $500.

  9. Wow, welcome to the 1990's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft are now toutine 'Do Not Disturb' as a feature ?
    Sheesh, every IM client I used since ICQ in the 1990's has this.

  10. Do not disturb achievement by Dan+East · · Score: 3, Funny

    How does one earn this "New Achievement, Do Not Disturb"? By not interacting with your online friends for a certain amount of hours?

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:Do not disturb achievement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One hopes it makes the achievements not disturb the gameplay. It sucks when playing a nice immersive game and *BINGBING* **YOU HAVE EARNED XXX** flashes up..

      Scrolling leaderboards that cannot be disabled are even worse. I'm talking single player games here, this is a curse in many games made in the last 5 years to justify an always on internet connection.

      (you can get the hell off my lawn now)

    2. Re:Do not disturb achievement by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

      Notifications settings are a thing already you know. As is appear offline.

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
      https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
    3. Re:Do not disturb achievement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know OP is xbox but PC games often do not have such options or when they exist they are reset more often than Facebook privacy settings.

  11. DND IS now news worthy?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ARE you kidding me???

  12. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  13. Re:Microsoft's XBox is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    L.O.L.

    Where did you get that information from? 1999?

  14. Re:Microsoft's XBox is dead by supremebob · · Score: 1

    Ok, smart guy, find me a gaming PC with a graphics card capable of playing modern day first person shooters in 4K resolution for $500. Good luck... just the video card alone will cost you $300.

  15. Re:Microsoft's XBox is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here's one:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV2swgcRVRw
    Here's another:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcrotHUVFN0

    Shop better

  16. Re:Microsoft's XBox is dead by supremebob · · Score: 1

    Meh... A GeForce 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580 isn't fast enough to run most games at a 4K resolution at 60 FPS. You really need a GeForce 1070 or a AMD Vega 64.

  17. Re:Microsoft's XBox is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The X1X's GPU is only slightly more powerful than a 580. You can bridge that gap by a relatively tame overclock. Also, isn't the standard for Cinematic Console Gaming 30 FPS?