Xbox One's Reputation System Locks Harassers Into Their Own Hell

[TiberiusEsuriens]

Great idea, not going to work IRL. The problem is that the only people that use these systems are those that are being targeted against. My first and only game of DOTA2 put me in a group of not-my-language speaking players who promptly tried to destroy my profile. Having this system may make the online experience better for the few that don't get hit with crap, but I think it will only serve to discourage online play by legitimately polite gamers over all. Gamers will definitely be afraid to play, just not the ones Microsoft is trying to scare off.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Unless MS is planning to form an oversight group like Valve's Overwatch this isn't going to stop the cesspit that is Xbox Live.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

Sounds dandy, but I do recall several instances where players who were openly gay were hit with abuse reports by griefers & had they're accounts banned, so there would need to be some kind of oversight of this process, not unlike the Overwatch program

 

[fix-the-spade]

Except assholes are assholes and will happily abuse the system to Reputation down all the non-assholes too, just so they can continue to be assholes to them.

Thankfully the system isn't automated, to get pushed into low-rep-land you still have to attract the attention of a mod.

No doubt there will be charmers who try to manipulate the system, but they will encounter mod wrath themselves since reports on Xbox Live are not anonymous (not to the moderator reading them anyway) and seeing a name filing twenty reports a day or twenty reports against one user always goes down well.

It could be worse, DotA 2 has a fully automated report system and exactly what you're talking about happens all the time. Players get booted into LPQ (Low Priority Que) by people aggrieved at getting beaten (or just trolling) spamming the report button and getting their mates to until the pre-set limit is reached. That sucks.

 

[VanQ]

This does not work! I never acted like a shithead while on XBox Live but my reputation was half a star because the shitheads will vote you down for concentrating on the game and kicking their ass.

 

[bandit0802]

Great idea, but yeah, it definitely has the potential to be abused. I'd say put in an appeals process or something, especially since this is community punishment that can be handed out on a whim.

 

[masticina]

This would work.

Oh sure there will be allot of stories like "innocents" who end up being marked like that. But really check the microsoft forums and see how many people are truly innocent.

And certainly to end up in the pool of filth one has to really make it bad. Think your average 13 year old on Halo or Call of Duty. Let them enjoy a delightful time of gaming amongst their own.

Seriously let them, give the cheaters their own server.. give the assholes their own little area where they can be as much an asshole as they desire. But let those who just want to play a game enjoy their time.

Seriously there is a reason why some shooters offer an auto-mute. Because you need it! And lets be fair everybody can be a jerk at times, there are those who try to orchestrate how the game is going. That weird person that in a public game where he/she isn't with his/her clan.. tries to control what the other players are doing.

Will this system be abused, well as long as Microsoft doesn't uses automated systems for this. And actually checks the logs..then it all ought to be fine. And that is the important thing here that it has to be checked by hand. You can't do this fully automatic and yes people are jerks and are downvoting for whatever reason so. A low rep shouldn't automatically put you in danger.

And I can't wait to see the new forum section on the xbox live forums. There "I have been put in the JERK group and I am innocent" section. Really reading the banned console and suspended account section is a hoot! How more innocent they try to come out how worse the things they have done.

 

[Ralphfromdk]

This might be the only smart thing the Kinect could be used for.
Seeing as it's always going to be on when you play, have it sit and listen for harsh language, and after a certain amount, it could put your swearing arse into the games where all the other buttholes play.

A decent use for the Kinect, who would have thunk it.

 

[LostintheWick]

Except assholes are assholes and will happily abuse the system to Reputation down all the non-assholes too, just so they can continue to be assholes to them.

Especially since they do like to work in packs on the 360, like Hyenas. Means they can ruin your rep allot easier than your one vote against them.

And again, Microsoft's idiocy is exposed in the first comment. What a crock xD

I think that at the core of this, it's a good idea/intention. Or at least, it's an idea that I like. But we don't know how it's actually going to work, which leaves alot of room for people to assume and criticize before it's even in action.

So now I have an idea. Let's wait to see how this all plays out before deciding how "idiotic" this idea is.

(plus, if these roving gangs of rep trashes were such a problem, why do all of my friends have 5 star ratings on live? They are constantly playing competitive games online with strangers. You'd think they would have felt the "hyena" packs by now...)

 

[Webb Myers]

Ummm...when Microsoft says "we should be able to identify those folks", they don't mean by listening to user reviews. They mean by listening to the voice channels and counting how many times someone uses words from a naughty list.

They don't actually care what reviews a person receives. Voting on other users is designed to give YOU (the voter) a sense of empowerment after being victimized by a griefer.

 

[rodneyy]

it might work a bit better if there was an automated review of what has been said ingame.

say you get 3 or 4 downvotes in a game after whatever arbitrary level they choose. once that is passed all your chat logs for said game are downloaded and a voice recognition is run for key words. if you been quiet all game or not said anything bad or insulting then noting happens if you are doing the normall round of "noob" and you "mums so fat" jokes then the downvote stands.

they call it robust lets hope thats true as anything as simple as you win, you get downvote, repeat 50 times, ban is anything but.

 

[Elijah Newton]

I remember reading post-mortems on The Sims Online which featured something like this resulting in "The Dollhouse Mafia"


The Sims Online allowed users to declare other users un trustworthy too. The face of an untrustworthy user appeared circled in bright red among all the trustworthy faces in a user's hub.

It didn't take long for a group calling itself the Sims Mafia to figure out how to use this mechanic to shake down new users when they arrived in the game. The dialog would go something like this:

"Hi! I see from your hub that you're new to the area. Give me all your Simoleans or my friends and I will make it impossible to rent a house.?

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm a member of the Sims Mafia, and we will all mark you as untrustworthy, turning your hub solid red (with no more room for green), and no one will play with you. You have five minutes to comply. If you think I'm kidding, look at your hub-three of us have already marked you red. Don't worry, we'll turn it green when you pay?"


http://buildingreputation.com/writings/2009/10/the_dollhouse_mafia_or_why_to.html

 

[masticina]

it might work a bit better if there was an automated review of what has been said ingame.

say you get 3 or 4 downvotes in a game after whatever arbitrary level they choose. once that is passed all your chat logs for said game are downloaded and a voice recognition is run for key words. if you been quiet all game or not said anything bad or insulting then noting happens if you are doing the normall round of "noob" and you "mums so fat" jokes then the downvote stands.

they call it robust lets hope thats true as anything as simple as you win, you get downvote, repeat 50 times, ban is anything but.

I wouldn't trust Voice Recognition! Nah it needs a human hand in this.. just like they are already doing with account suspensions and console banning. They need to dig through the data and make sure the reports if they use some kind of reporting is right.

It is how they deal with the player suspensions and console bans. It would be a great system to take out the worst of the voice/text chat abusers.

 

[faefrost]

It will be a purely a usable system. Basically a semi automated briefing minigame. What will make it even more pointless, as we have seen countless times before, that isolate the nice people from the assholes only works if the numbers on both sides are balanced or sufficient for constant matching. If they aren't? Guess what you get matched with the foul mouthed bastards anyway.

Why even bother with his sort of thing? They have voice recognition baked into the console. Simply keep a robust library of obscenities, racial slurs etc, and when the XBone hears them, it cuts off the players voice chat.

 

[rofltehcat]

Sounds awesome but will be abused to hell.

 

[lacktheknack]

Hey

guys

where

does

it

say

that

reputation

is

player-based?

In fact, it says this:

"If there's a few per cent of our population that are causing the rest of the population to have a miserable time," says Lavin, "we should be able to identify those folks." Identify, and do something about.

"We", as in Microsoft. Not the audience.

It's not an automatic process, but repeated offenders will see their Reputation dip, and dip...

It's non-automated, so it can't be abused from the player-end. It's based on "offenses", so it's reviewed by a moderator.

There's a terrible plague circulating these forums, and its main symptom is "inability to read the OP". Keep yourself safe, folks: Don't just skim the first post before offering your stance.

 

[shrekfan246]

There's a terrible plague circulating these forums, and its main symptom is "inability to read the OP". Keep yourself safe, folks: Don't just skim the first post before offering your stance.

I think the assumption is coming from the fact that there's millions of people on Xbox Live, so Microsoft policing them all themselves seems a bit... impractical? They're a big company, but even still.

Anyway, sounds like a good idea on paper. I await to hear about how it would actually be implemented, though.

 

[Aerosteam]

This is good... in theory. They're not taking into account those who abuse the system and expect everyone to follow these rules properly- which will never happen.

I'm lost, I thought this system was already in place in XBOX Live, with the reputation stars?

But the rep stars are completely broken, I tested this out with a friend, I listed his newly-made profile as 'avoid' and the stars went up from 3 to 5.

The system is only really used to tell you:
3 stars = They are new to Xbox LIVE
5 stars = They have been on Xbox LIVE for at least a short time.

... That's it.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Wait, is the "report" system where people can vote to lower reputation? Because that'll get abused the fuck out of it.

Considering how just making a bunch of trustable mods would take to much effort and money, and M$ really doesn't give a fuck, I'm pretty sure they'll just go with the lazy, abusable "report" system.