Editor's Note: The Dick Tax

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Eacaraxe_v1legacy

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You know, I'm not sure if this has been stated prior in nearly a hundred posts for which I haven't the patience or alertness...but I honestly don't see this as a bad thing.

Perhaps charging poorly-received players (and let's not mistake that for what it isn't, a bad sport is a bad sport but good sports may be poorly received by given communities for one reason or another and end up with a bad rep anyway) additional for games and services is a ham-fisted solution with ample opportunity for abuse by the community, but at least it's a kernel of an idea for leveling consequences for (intentionally) bad play and a lack of sportsmanship. Moreover, hitting people in the wallet isn't going to be incentive to change the way a player acts, it's just going to drive them to other services or games in which they can actively be dicks without consequences.

I suggested once (in WoW of all places in the context of random dungeon finders) a weighted rating system. Players can anonymously "like" or "dislike" a given player, which raises or lowers their overall reputation. The degree to which that reputation is affected is dependent upon the comparative rep of the opining player to the opined player, similar to a ladder system; a low-rep player "disliking" a high-rep player will not affect the higher-rep player's score much, where that high-rep player "disliking" a low-rep player will significantly affect his. The rub is that to "like" or "dislike" a player comes with a rep tax (with disliking costing more rep than liking), which curtails abuse of the system or handing out ratings for the heck of it. Moreover, players' rep progresses towards a neutral position on a monthly basis, making sure players don't fall into a downward or upward reputation spiral and incentivizes active play to preserve a high rep, or taking a break to "forget and forgive" a bad rep.

Now, to have meaning that system or something like it would have to have rewards or penalties. I would suggest in-game rewards, like perks or extra weapons, or penalties rather than out-of-game, like charging players more. Assuming 0 is the neutral point, for example falling into the negatives locks out cheaper, more skill-less weapons; while going high-positive unlocks high-skill, high-power weapons or other assorted goodies.

An example: let's take MW2. XxXBlUnTMaSTuH420 has an initial rep of 0, neutral. He enters a lobby and starts trash-talking, spewing slurs, and being a general jackass while running around with the lamest class possible. Half the lobby gets tired of his stupidity and dislikes him, which dumps him into the negatives. His first penalty? grenade launchers are locked and he can no longer noob tube it up. He keeps it up over the course of several games and continues racking up the negative rep, other stuff is systemically locked until all he can do is run around with an M4A1, M9, semtex, flashbangs, marathon, lightweight, steady aim and copycat. Good luck with that uberleet K/D ratio now, jackass.

Now where this is nice is with unified services like Steam, rep can be connected to account rather than game. So, let's say BlUnT gets tired of mucking around with his humiliatingly-awful MW2 class he screwed himself into and goes over to TF2. Since he has such a negative rep already, he discovers he no longer gets to wear hats, and can only use each classes' default weapons. Probably should have learned his lesson over in MW2, and hope he can salvage his rep by playing Medic (since everybody loves a medic!). So he does, and gets a couple high-rep players to uprate him...which puts him back in the ballgame in terms of being able to play the way he wants.
 

jmarquiso

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You know, I'm pretty sure this is mainly an off the cuff comment. The interview was quite conversational, and people took this one line and made that the whole interview. It's sounds like it's an example of something Newell would like to fix, with a comment made as a proposed solution - charging extra for voice chat - and admittingly this doesn't sound very good. However, a complete VAC ban, which is the case now for hackers, seems quite overzealous.

In practice, though, they already have a negative profit for hat makers (they've paid them quite a bit more than the hatmakers paid for TF2). They're looking for ways to reward mappers now, too (using a "stamp" system - if you're a fan of a map, rather than buy it, you buy a stamp which goes back to the mapper) but so far it's been difficult to implement. They've also added a coaching system to further give accolades to good players as well as a Coaching achievement in Portal 2 Co-op.

TF2 is their experiment ground for this sort of thing.
 

jmarquiso

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Eacaraxe said:
Now where this is nice is with unified services like Steam, rep can be connected to account rather than game. So, let's say BlUnT gets tired of mucking around with his humiliatingly-awful MW2 class he screwed himself into and goes over to TF2. Since he has such a negative rep already, he discovers he no longer gets to wear hats, and can only use each classes' default weapons. Probably should have learned his lesson over in MW2, and hope he can salvage his rep by playing Medic (since everybody loves a medic!). So he does, and gets a couple high-rep players to uprate him...which puts him back in the ballgame in terms of being able to play the way he wants.
This sounds like a positive aspect of gamification, yet it's still behavior modification. Along these lines - rewarding good behavior is one thing (something gamification mechanics do in spades), but there's a reason that they stop short of punishment. It makes the experience less enjoyable for the player, and few games can actually afford to say "screw that player" - they need everyone to keep coming back.

On the other hand - multiplayer games live and die by their community. This weekend's a free COD Black Ops weekend, and if players try this game out and get yelled at, they aren't going to purchase the game. In other words, some games cannot afford to have that problem player.

However, trash talk is an inherent part of multiplayer gaming culture (one of my least favorite, personally), just like competitive sports, and it doesn't do the game any favors to halt it completely. Some people feel they earned the right to yell "I OWNED YOU!", and they have. There are times though where players push it too far - especially racist, sexist, homophobic harassment, etc.

I'm not a fan of overly punishing the player, but slowly locking down select features could help. A reddit style "upvote" "downvote" system (one vote per person per player), or logging how many times a player's been kicked for a game should be enough (They should include a pulldown list for a "reason" though) I've been kicked for idling afk too long, and that's sort of a dick thing to do).

Not to say this won't be abused, because gamers like to game the system as much as possible, but it's something to consider.
 

Eacaraxe_v1legacy

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jmarquiso said:
This sounds like a positive aspect of gamification, yet it's still behavior modification. Along these lines - rewarding good behavior is one thing (something gamification mechanics do in spades), but there's a reason that they stop short of punishment. It makes the experience less enjoyable for the player, and few games can actually afford to say "screw that player" - they need everyone to keep coming back.

[...]

Not to say this won't be abused, because gamers like to game the system as much as possible, but it's something to consider.
Not to sound like some kind of internet fascist, but nowadays I'm strongly in favor of behavior modification through negative reinforcement. If a player is being punished through reputation-based mechanics, the fault should be only theirs as a result of doing something to merit that bad reputation. The gaming community had been self-regulatory for years, and that's been diluted through increasing popularity of games. Sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and admit the carrot is insufficient, and bring out the stick.

Now, this doesn't preclude the possibility of localized variants or community solutions: for example, a dedicated server that excludes rules on rep-based unlocks, but requires a minimum rep to join. Matchmaking services that allow players to designate what rep of player they want to play with. Servers, that if a player with an extremely low rep joins, they must play with some humiliating models or skins.

All the same, going back to my original post, the idea of a "rep tax" and basing reputation on a ladder system is intended to curtail abuse, while granting "trusted" players with a good reputation more of an opinion on a player than someone with a low reputation, whose opinion cannot necessarily be trustworthy. Players will want to preserve their own rep above affect others', so if they're lowering their own rep by upvoting or downvoting someone else they're going to do it when its truly warranted, rather than retribution for simply losing to them or disapproving of trash-talking. If the taxation ends up creating a zero-sum game between players of equal reputation, then a single group of players can't abuse the system by continually upvoting each other.
 

KarlMonster

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Mar 10, 2009
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Forgive me for not using the quote feature, this is easier:

"... whenever I would beat someone, they would automatically flag me with an 'unsportsmanlike conduct' report."

I completely sympathize, and I intended to cover that possibility in my post, but my trains of thought have so many stops that sometimes I forget where I'm going. It's entirely feasible for an automated system to discover that 'total # player losses' = 'total # of dick votes'. However, its much more likely that those guys were giving out 'Unsportsmanlike' as if it were Halloween; to both those that beat him, and those that lost to him. So 'total # dick votes' would be a number approaching 'total # of games played'. That's a big warning sign in neon lights.

A good system should make it difficult/costly to issue a 'dick vote.' I would happily accept a system where it cost ME something to report someone else - providing my feedback had weight.

Again, regardless of its implementation, its more important that SOMETHING be tried. If only because gamers do not deserve to have to face a whole new wave of crappy behavior in opponents with each new game that is released.

A best case would be something like E-bay's seller rating. Why should I bother playing someone with a zero rating?

And full disclosure: I gave up on my Counter-Strike clan because our rules prohibited groundless accusations of cheating. I fully supported that rule, and I still do - but we had kids in our clan that were cheating, and I couldn't prove it. [Well, OK - and they just wouldn't shut up on alltalk! Note that unrestrained chatter doesn't make them dicks, since it was technically their server too.]