GWJ Conference Call Episode 598

Sea of Thieves, Subnautica, Kerbal Space Program, Mega Man Maker, Teamwork, Your Emails and More!

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This week Sean Sands grabs the host chair to talk teamwork with Cory, Allen and Julian!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind.

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00:01:48 Sea of Thieves
00:07:02 Subnautica
00:13:08 Kerbal Space Program: Making History
00:17:09 Mega Man Maker
00:20:01 Warhammer: Vermintide
00:22:27 Teamwork
00:42:03 Your Emails

Just a quick heads up/PSA for anyone who might not know this, prompted by Rabbit saying he bought two copies of Sea of Thieves.

If you have a PC and an Xbox (or two Xboxes), you only need to buy one copy of recent Microsoft first party games to play co-op thanks to Play Anywhere. Schmoona and I have done this recently with both Gears of War 4 and Sea of Thieves, and I've used this method to create multi car photo scenarios in recent Forza games.

In fact, it's an extension of the method that you could always use to play co-op across two Xboxes with digital purchases from the earliest days of XBLA on Xbox 360, which works thanks to how Microsoft issues licenses for digital purchases. We've used it extensively ever since then to be able to play a great many games together without having to purchase two copies when we owned two Xbox 360s, and now we use it to cross play between our Xbox One and PC.

Basically, a Microsoft digital purchase issues two licenses: one to the purchasing account, and one to the "home console" of the purchasing account, which allows any profile on that console to play the game even if the purchasing profile is not present. (In the Xbox 360 case, there wasn't the codified concept of a "home console," so you would have to physically purchase the license on the Xbox you wanted the second profile to use.)

So in my current scenario works as follows.

- My profile has our Xbox One set as it's home console.
- I purchase Microsoft first party games wherever I like — on the Xbox, in the Windows App Store, or even just on Xbox.com.
- I play on my gaming PC, thanks to the license issued to my profile as the purchasing account.
- Schmoona plays on our Xbox One, thanks to the license issued to our Xbox One as the home console of my account. (We do have to be sure my account is NOT logged in on the Xbox when she is playing, though, since that will block me from playing the game on the PC side.)
- Bonus: thanks to the new system where you only need to own one Gold account per Xbox, we also only have to have a single Gold subscription now (whereas in the Xbox 360 days we had to have gold accounts for both of us).

Further, I've read that this even extends to Game Pass, although I've not tried it personally. Buy the subscription with the profile you intended to play the game with on your PC, and then another player can play the same games co-op with you on your home console via the console license.

Now, this doesn't allow you to play on two different PCs, since you can't (yet?) set a PC as your home console — at least one of the players has to be using an Xbox. So, perhaps that wouldn't have saved Rabbit a purchase, assuming neither of them wanted to play on an Xbox. But, hopefully this method can help others enjoy playing more games together without breaking the bank — including (especially!) Sea of Thieves, which provides a really wonderful "in the room together" co-op experience that we are enjoying greatly.

You know how some times something will divert your attention while you're listening to the podcast and you miss part of conversation? I drifted back in when Cory said, "How does an upgraded bucket work?" and I debated whether or not to rewind or just let it go from there.

Gday Dave from Toowoomba! GWJers down under represent!

I would love to hear what others think about this, but I believe it's a pity that you refrained from discussing XCOM 2: WotC because it was "talked to death" last year. I get why Amanda won't be discussing Sea of Thieves on next week's podcast for half an hour, but I think it's interesting to hear someone's thoughts on a game that hasn't been discussed for a year.

Felix Threepaper wrote:

Gday Dave from Toowoomba! GWJers down under represent!

Thanks mate!! Was so awesome to hear my question read on the call....always great when Australia gets some love!!

Re: Vermintide 2: If anyone wants to play this with other GWJers, we have been getting a steady crowd of 3 to 8 players on the GWJ Twitch every night (up to 2 rooms). Some players that have been playing every night since VT1, and new people joining every day. I personally get on around 10 PM Eastern to split the difference between eastern and pacific, but both rooms are frequently full around 7 PM eastern, if not sooner. This game is actually extremely good.

Vermintide 2 as meaning we don’t need Left 4 Dead 3 is CRAZYTALK. It doesn’t look like Vermintide 2 has any versus mode at all and is only cooperative.....?

I absolutely have several thousands of hours of playtime between L4D1 and L4D2 on Xbox 360, and at least 95% of that was in the versus modes. I had a team and we played in tournaments and ladder seasons and everything.

4v4 is really the best way to play L4D so if Vermintide doesn’t have that, we still neeed L4D3.

dejanzie wrote:

I would love to hear what others think about this, but I believe it's a pity that you refrained from discussing XCOM 2: WotC because it was "talked to death" last year. I get why Amanda won't be discussing Sea of Thieves on next week's podcast for half an hour, but I think it's interesting to hear someone's thoughts on a game that hasn't been discussed for a year.

I agree with dejanzie, especially because distance can make some people change their feelings about a game vs post release excitement.

I think a lot of us go back and play games from the last five years for the first time.