Why everything has been made so difficult?

j00nas · Jul 10, 2023

Hi.

Any answer would be great, it's an honest question. I am puzzled by how Microsoft haven't bankcrupted years ago, considering how anything related to Microsoft software is so difficult to use. Nothing is easy: Even the easiest stuff like downloading a game and playing it has been made so difficult you end up wasting multiple hours just to get everything to work.

I bought the "Game Pass" from Microsoft Store yesterday. I didn't see anywhere it to be mentioned with any other name than "Game Pass". I downloaded Forza Horizon 4, and it took me 2,5 hours for some reason. I bought the game from Steam on March and the download lasted just slightly less than 30 minutes. How it is so freaking slow on MS Store I have no idea. 2 hours 30 minutes for 80gb is ridiculous. I had to close everything but my browser for the time being, because if I had even the Steam launcher open the download speed would reduce. I did all the tips I found with google and nothing improved the speed. I even did a speedtest to see was my connection having issues but it was completely normal. Checked do I have someone riding on my wifi, nope. It's just a feature of MS Store it seems.

Welp, after 2,5 hours I didn't have time to try the new game anymore but I thought it's all good. I never have to do anything else than download a game and it's basically good to go, maybe the game automatically installs some software when I click 'play' but that's all, whenever I purchase games from other platforms (I have hundreds of games on other platforms, FH4 Steam edition sadly is not working for Nvidia drivers) so of course I thought it's done.

Today I was ready to start playing, when I noticed that whenever I clicked the "shortcut" it just opened an image, not the actual game. Took me an hour of google before I noticed that people kept mentioning "Xbox Game Pass", and realised I probably need to have the "xbox launcher". There was no mention about it on MS Store, absolutely nothing on the game's page so how should I know I need a completely different launcher? I'm not operating on Xbox but PC. My mistake, sure. Of course no installation links in MS Store either, because that would be too easy for the customer I guess. FYI There is no mention about where you should save the game, either, and I will tell why that's actually pretty important information.

So I download the Xbox Game Launcher or whatever it's called, and from there I noticed that for some reason it says only my C-Drive is in NTFS (I have another drive which is NTFS but for some reason it doesn't accept it). Then I noticed that the game has to be in C-Drive as well, probably because of the NTFS? Well that's really great, because I had 60gb free memory in C-Drive, hence why I didn't download the game there in the first place. The other NTFS drive had 100gb free memory but too bad since I can't use it.. So now I had to try and find more space for C so I could fit the 80gb game there. That took me another hour, because the drive was already max. sized so I couldn't just throw another 100gb in there, but I had to try and find stuff which could be deleted (pretty hard considering most of the important software is in C and I don't usually place anything removable in there). But yes, I managed to free enough space. Have to reinstall some stuff into another drive but oh well... And here's the fun part: I can't move the already-downloaded-game from it's location into C. I have no idea why, it just gives an error code and refuses to do so. So I wasted 2 hours 30 minutes yesterday to download a game which won't play from it's current location, and I cannot move it where it would work because of "windows-features".. So I have to delete the game and spend (probably) another 2 hours 30 minutes downloading the game from Xbox Games -launcher to C-Drive. And pray that there won't be any updates to any software, because I only managed to free 22gb space. C-Drive has now 82gb space, and the game is 80gb. So yeah, not much room to move around.. I haven't bothered to download the game again today. If we include the download time yesterday I've already spent six hours trying to play this one game. Add the another 2,5 hours I'm forced to use for downloading if I want to play. It's longer than an average work day.

Why is everything made so difficult by Microsoft? Again: I've never had these kind of difficulties with any other platform. Not U-Play, not EA (or Origin), not Epic, not Rockstar, not Battle.net, or any other I've tried over the years of gaming. I just cannot understand why this is made so hard. If MS Store told in the purchase page "you need xbox launcher" I would of done that first and I'd saved all this other hazzle. That's at least 4 hours saved just with that little information, because I never would of downloaded the game into "wrong" drive either, because you can't do that when you download from the xbox launcher. Thank god I'm on the summer vacation because I'd be super pissed if it was just a day-off and I'd wasted it all on trying to make the game work. Now I'm just frustrated and tired.

:)

AlisaH.

Trying to use Presentation, first really happy with how it lets me line things up with other things I already inserted, then 1) creates paragraph breaks randomly. WHY?????. Only way to fix it is to erase and type whole paragraph over again. and 2) All of a sudden starts choosing my font size. I select text to choose the font size I want, it over-rules me. WHY????????

I do not like when software designers think they can think better than me. Never overfingrule me.

psalm14one

I wish I had an answer for you. All I tend to get are more questions. It still baffles me how we have come to rely so heavily on technology and now it is constantly creating more problems and frustrations than it solves.

Sometimes I think it is intended to make us all crazy.

psalm14one

NOTHING in Microsoft is easy. NOTHING! How we all ever allowed this to happen, where Microsoft controls the universe is beyond me, I honestly expected the world was going to be blown 5o bits in the year 2000 because I expected the software for nuclear rockets to be handled by Microsoft. I can't believe we are all still here. Recently, I have had to reign into my email on my phone and my tablet. It doesn't like my password any more, so I had to change it everywhere. I have their "to do list" program that I had to sign back into again. And, of course, everything you have to sign in on every device you have to be sent an email to another email address, so you're better have 2. Then you get a code you have to enter, and again this is for every program on every device.

When I finally do get into the to do list, I have a bunch of important reminders that I DID NOT PUT IN, INSTEAD, theses are random, nasty email solicitations! It had gotten so ridiculous that you spend many hours (you supposedly saved using a computer) just to get into a program or clean up all of the garbage. THEN, once you do get back in, they want to send you on a tour of more useless garbage. All this wonderful technology does, is waste valuable time, create a great deal of aggravation and high blood pressure and more problems than it is worth.

I recently had Microsoft update and it literally deleted multiple work files I had been working on and this is NOT the first time!

I've had less issues with Open Office Writer documents disappearing than Word docs, but have even lost some of those; it is beyond infurating.

I am going to start moving everything I can away from phones and computers and go back to paper when I can.

I can't count the number of times in the last year or two that I've tried for 20 minutes to do something on a computer or phone and give up, not caring any more,

I CAN'T WAIT, to get where I don't have to rely on "stupid" phones and time consuming computers any more!

Kim Welch

I agree. It's just completely ridiculous. I guess they have such a massive monopoly on PC that they can get away with this complicated garbage.

Anthony tanios

alright since no one is talking about it, i will! I've had my copy of minecraft since i upgraded to windows 10 back in late 2015/early 2016 and played it fairly regularly, played java and only java. now my friends got minecraft and i want to play with them BUT they have the bedrock version. i felt down on my luck but then someone pointed out that in the new launcher you can just alternate between bedrock and java, all great! but, as all things microsoft, it's needlessly complicated!!! it kept saying it was incompatible with the launcher, providing me with a link to download the RIGHT launcher, but NOOOOO the link just wouldn't open! so i hit up the installer and hit repair and guess what? didn't work. uninstalled it, re-installed it... also nothing... uninstalled it AND the installer and got a new installer but NOW!... it's asking me to update my windows which is already up to date... the minecraft installer, for god-only-knows what reason installed the windows 10 update assistant and there lied YET ANOTHER problem. this onion has so many layers to it you wouldn't believe... ANYWAYS! here's what the problem was: "CPU ok MEMORY ok DISK SPACE ok (!) OPERATING SYSTEM contact your system administrator to upgrade windows server or enterprise editions" um... hello? I OWN YOU?! I *AM* THE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR?! anyways, other than that, my email password is now my PC password and that's not cool. and that's not even mentioning the endless hours of trouble my friends had to go thru to get their copies of minecraft off the MS store but hey, that's a story for another day. but for today! anyone got any tips to fix my 2 little problems?

Why everything has been made so difficult?