Viva Pinata family settings?
(Visited 8813 times) Misc
Feb 102007
So both my kids are, as I have mentioned before, hooked on Viva Pinata. I just gave them XBox Live Silver accounts (the free ones) so they could send pinatas back and forth, and configured the family settings so that they could only be seen by friends. Then they friended one another. But when they go to the Post Office, they cannot see anyone at all in their friends list — the only person they can send crates to is themselves. They can’t even send one to me! Anyone know whether there’s specific Family Settings required for sending crates? I searched around on the Net, with no luck, and the manual is no help either…
13 Responses to “Viva Pinata family settings?”
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It is a super cute game. Never tried to trade pinatas before though. I will look into it and see if I can find out anything.
Raph, with silver accounts, they aren’t gonna be able to go out and game with the masses, so you don’t have to worry about them stumbling upon unsavory gamers.
Remove the family settings restrictions, and do your parental supervision the old fashioned way, and you won’t have any problems with pinata transfers.
Actually, I neglected to set the “parents approve friends” thing at first, and Elena racked up like 6 friends she doesn’t know at all, and immediately started using the headset to talk to them. So she definitely can game with the masses somehow.
Brew is largely correct. The main difference between a Gold and Silver account is that the Silver account doesn’t actually allow you to play with other people online. Can’t do online co-op or multiplayer, etc. I’m guessing the Gold account is required to send people pinatas too.
–matt
Incidentally Raph, just something to whet that Pinata lust: Do you know that you can get both Pinata Twins (when two hatch from the same egg) and Pinata Wildcards? (slightly altered versions of normal pinatas that have an exceedingly small…less than 1 in 1000…chance of showing up when you breed a pinata pair).
–matt
The manual explicitly states that Silver accounts can send and receive pinatas, which is why I suspect the family settings of being the culprit. I will probably have to go through and toggle them all one by one to see which one is blocking the friends list from showing up.
I didn’t know about Twins and Wildcards… I’ll ask the kids if they knew. š They are way ahead of me in the game.
Ok one thing that hasnt been mentioned … When you sign up for a Silver Account on LIVE you get 1 month free gold ( So you can try out the full service , then after the month it reverts to silver )
So the way they got the Friends is through the 1 month free , No way around it im afraid …
yes, i can confirm that silver accounts can trade/receive packages sent from the same machine at least. I don’t know about non-local trades tho.
As to the friends she didn’t know… did she at any time have a gold membership? free 30 day trial? 48 hour pass that came in the Viva Pinata box? Or one of the ones that came with any of the Burger King games?
I’m wondering, because in years of being on Live, both gold and silver, I’ve never received any friends invites from complete strangers. I’ve gotten blind invites from people who I met in a game here or there, but haven’t even talked to…
Remove all the restrictions from one of the accounts. See if you can see yourself. Add restrictions back ’til you can’t.
The last restriction added is what’s causing it.
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Good point about the free month of Gold — you’re right, that must be where that’s coming from.
The kids have become convinced that you can only send stuff to someone who is logged on at the time. That seems like it would be a bit silly… Matt, expect them to try to add you as a friend, since you’re their pinata godling. š
I’d bet that the culprit is having the communication set to “Friends Only”. Also I believe there is a setting about player created content, those would be the first ones to check. Just an FYI the “Friends Only” communication setting is very sparsely supported, most times you just won’t be able to communicate with anyone at all.
The people that I talk to that play couldn’t figure it out either:( Maybe try asking CS?
Hey, im an experienced VP Gamer, You do not need a silver account on silver (for any games) to make friends, you can send/recieve packages on silver, Rare (developer of Viva Pinata) has made it like this so you dont have to fork out the $99 for gold subscription just to send packages. You can however block friends just on the settings blade (on the 360 homepage).
If your kids are very young then you should block communication, but if they are older and sensible then they should be o.k. I am 15 and have had no problems. Guess all the pedo’s prefer email.
PS: Wildcards & Twins do exist. I am going hard for a Cocodile Wildcard now and havebred over 50.
Hope this answered your question