Now You Can Shut Up Racist 13-Year-Olds In Halo: Reach!

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Now You Can Shut Up Racist 13-Year-Olds In Halo: Reach!



Bungie has revealed a ton of info about how multiplayer will work in Halo: Reach [http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Reach-Xbox-360/dp/B002BSA20M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1278952817&sr=1-1], including the ability to easily and permanently silence those racist pre-teens screaming slurs into your ear.

At the beginning of the month, we made a post about a cool-looking Halo: Reach multiplayer trailer [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98815-Nifty-Halo-Reach-Multiplayer-Trailer-Features-Jetpacks] that showed off some of the new features coming down the pipe. Amidst all the BIG, IMPORTANT TEXT about what gamers could look forward to, though, one of the things was not like the others: What was "Active Roster," why was it deemed important enough to be included alongside features like Assassinations, and why should gamers give a damn?

This week, Bungie posted a massive information dump [http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=BWU_031910] on its community page answering that question and many more about how Halo: Reach's matchmaking is going to work. The Active Roster itself is cool - a hybrid between a traditional lobby/Party system and the Friend system built into Xbox Live that lets you easily keep track of which of your friends are online, who they're playing with, etc., but it doesn't exactly seem like a revolution.

Some of the other stuff, though? Well, that's got me excited. Bungie is promising that players will be easily able to "Mute Ban" people who they'd rather not listen to (you know the type of player I mean). While I'm imagining a perfect world where the Mute Ban option resulted in Master Chief being dispatched to kick the offending racist teenager in the throat and crush his voice box, it'll probably just prevent anyone in the game from having to hear his verbal diarrhea, which works fine for me.

There are some matchmaking options that seem so blatantly obvious, though, that it's a wonder that people didn't think of them before. You'll be able to set a rather wide range preferences: Do you want a game where people are playing to win, or a game where people are more interested in just being casual and having fun? Do you delight in talking smack, or do you want a more polite experience?

If I tried to encapsulate every little thing that Bungie was announcing here in the news post, we'd be here all day - I do particularly like the feature that'll let you queue up to join a party of your friends if they're already in a game - so really, just go get it from the horse's mouth [http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=BWU_031910], eh?

Reach is looking slick. The multiplayer beta is out on May 3rd. And jerkass griefers will begin falsely setting their preferences on May 4th.

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Katherine Kerensky

Why, or Why Not?
Mar 27, 2009
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Finally. This is brilliant.
Although I can see it being fun for griefers as well...
They could just join 'polite' or 'social' games and feth those up...
There are always flaws to good things, unfortunately...
 

Regiment

New member
Nov 9, 2009
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I'm definitely in favor of the Master-Chief-assault tactic being used on jerks.
 

khaimera

Perfect Strangers
Jun 23, 2009
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What is a jerkass greifer? That phrase is fun to say though. I hope I'm not one of those terms. I know I'm not a jerkass but maybe I'm a griefer. One who grieves? Good Grief

I'm very excited to have the casual vs playing to win option. It will help me take some of the pressure off myself to win and make it easier to just have fun screwing around.
 

Random Argument Man

New member
May 21, 2008
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The system can be abused. However, it's a step in the right direction. I'll forgive them for not doing this in Halo 2 and 3.
 

squid5580

Elite Member
Feb 20, 2008
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Umm I can do that with any game now. And the mute will carry over to any other game I might find myself in with said offensive player.
 

armaina

New member
Nov 1, 2007
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To everyone that is worried about abusers, if people abuse the system, that's what the mute-ban is for. Eventually it will balance itself out.
 

Phenakist

New member
Feb 25, 2009
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I don't care who you are, this officially makes Halo: Reach the best multiplayer game of the decade, this has been the Achilles heel of multiplayer and they've just put some armor over it.

Edit: Anyone who says this is a bad thing IS one of the loudmouthed people which this is aimed at.
 

Frank_Sinatra_

Digs Giant Robots
Dec 30, 2008
2,306
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Good for them, although it doesn't fix the issue of those kinds of people existing.
Anywho... Urge to get a 360 again is rising... Must... Resist...
 

caseylakes

New member
Jul 17, 2009
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Phoenixlight said:
As long as some people are prevented from joining polite games it should work.
I hope so, like maybe if they get mute-banned in 10% of the games they play they should not be able to use the polite option, or play to win option, heck they should do a sort of community challenge (kill 50 grunts on legendary, or something)on the campaign before they are allowed to matchmake.
 

Cpu46

Gloria ex machina
Sep 21, 2009
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Greyfox105 said:
Finally. This is brilliant.
Although I can see it being fun for griefers as well...
They could just join 'polite' or 'social' games and feth those up...
There are always flaws to good things, unfortunately...
Yea they could join the polite games, but im sure bungie has thought of something to counter that. Maybe if a player is mute banned on a polite setting it prevents them from playing under that setting, that would work well.