(no subject)

[cahn]

Here is how to fix at least some of the multiplayer Minecraft Bedrock Edition problems we have been experiencing, and I put this here a) for future reference because I'm sure this WILL happen again b) in case anyone else needs this:

-go to https://account.xbox.com and log in (with one's Microsoft password, not necessarily one's Minecraft password, and no I don't know why these are different but ours happen to be)

-go to the "Profile" (there's a link at the left but also can click on the username on the right and it says "Xbox profile" -- even if one is not using an xbox, as we are not (we are using a kindle fire)

-go to Privacy Settings

-scroll down and look to see if anything obvious that would explain why you can't do the the thing you want to do is blocked (in this case, why A's friend could not see him and click on him to join his game is because the "Others Can See You Online" setting was blocked)

I DON'T UNDERSTAND why Microsoft makes this a) sooooo hard to figure out to do; there's no direction for this in the game itself and I basically just had to google for half an hour and then something I read made me remember that oh, we'd had a similar though slightly different problem before and had fixed it something something xbox and maybe that would work; b) why the privacy settings suddenly changed when we'd had them set and they worked fine before. Oh wait, it's Microsoft.

Anyway, after an hour of frustrating troubleshooting (the first half hour was spent trying different things that we thought might work but didn't; the second half hour was spent googling) the kids got to play for half an hour, so I guess that was good.

Comments

[philomytha]

Oh, I feel your pain! Cub and his best friend have both discovered Roblox, so we are currently not wrangling with the intricacies of making Minecraft do anything at all and instead they are competitively delivering pizza. Or something like that. Trying to keep up with this stuff is a job in itself.

[cahn]

Right?? I know you've had your own struggles with this!

I'm also laughing because omg Roblox and the pizza delivering game which my kids have also independently discovered. A, and sometimes E although it is a bit young for her, also are both super excited about it, although sometimes they decide to do things like put themselves in the oven to set themselves on fire instead of delivering pizza. *facepalm*

(I wonder if some of the pizza game's popularity is that it has good instructions that even I, an adult, can follow. A's tried a couple more Roblox games and couldn't figure out how they worked, which I'm kind of relieved by, as they seemed to involve pixelated zombies and things, and although I had no idea how they worked either, I could imagine it being a bit much for A. I'm not sure though, since we never even figured out what the aim of the game was.)