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

[Something Amyss]

Am I the only one who thinks they should have already addressed this issue on the Xbox360? I mean they have a reputation system so if not to keep the filth away what was the point of it?

You ever notice that you can avoid someone and it actually RAISES their rep? I've seen this happen a lot.

They broke their system ages ago, and they've made no attempt to fix it. This is part of why I don't trust 'em with something this grand.

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

Unfortunately, "not automatic" appears to refer to the process of lowering your rep not happening rapidly if, say, 30 people decide to mark you. There's no mention of mods, but the guy interviewed does talk like it's an automated process.

 

[Pink Apocalypse]

I see people's free speech being ever so lightly censored so that they can only associate with "like minded individuals."

That is hyperbolic nonsense. Xbox Live is a private service that you pay to participate in.

Regulating its use has nothing to do with your 'free speech'. To make such an absurd claim clearly indicates that you don't have the slightest idea what the concept even means.

Spend less time playing video games, and more time studying.

 

[FalloutJack]

I'm sure that there will be NO CONSEQUENCES for this action that won't bite anybody in the ass, none whatsoever!

($20 says this gets abused faster than the rating system in Newgrounds.)

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

>Reputation system.

Does nobody important realise that reputation systems are practically BUILT for false flagging?

Personally I'm a fan of muting the other player, but I suppose you can't expect everyone to use the features they're given.

 

[Last Hugh Alive]

I remember when I was into the online phase for a little while on the 360 and noticing I received negative rep from a few people over games like Call of Duty 4 for trash talking and other communication related things, this being before I even had a mic. So yeah, taken to its logical extreme I can see this system being abused.

 

[Roxor]

I'm doubtful about how well this could work.

One thing which might help avoid abuse would be for those who falsely accuse someone of bad behaviour to have their reputation take a hit. For instance, report someone's bad behaviour and their account takes a hit of one point. If you're then found to have falsely reported them for bad behaviour when they haven't actually behaved badly, you get penalised by ten points.

 

[Sarge034]

After playing Mass Effect 3 MP, My Xbox reputation tanked, despite the fact that I didn't even own a mic. This idea will see much abuse. It feels like Microsoft screwed up....again.

And that, my good sir or madam, is probably why you were reported. You need to communicate in ME3 MP to be an effective team. If you ever played with me and refused to communicate for whatever reason then I reported you for "disruptive voice" or "unsporting conduct" so I had less of a chance of playing with you again and it adequately conveyed my reasoning why I did.

OT- We need to know more about this system. That's about all I can say. If it works anything like the current system it will fail and actually become a weapon for those who we are trying to combat. For example, once upon a time I had a bro that would play Left 4 Dead with me. We would lay down the plan for the two random bros and we would slaughter the enemy team in versus. And I'm talking legit SLAUGHTER. We didn't mod, glitch, grief, or exploit (I'm lookin at you dumpsters <.<). At the end we would have completely cycled the enemy players twice over, the enemy team would survive till they got about 100ft from their spawn (if they were lucky), we routinely fought tanks on the first part of every level, and the score would be so many thousands (we all got out in good health most of the time) to 200(ish). My rep was something like 86% avoided. "Avoided for what?", you might ask. BEING TOO AGRESSIVE. How can I be too aggressive in a game where the objective is to kill the enemy team? They could have said I was too skilled so they would be less likely to be matched with me, BUT NOOOOO. Guess I should have let them win...

Also, how does the system work now? I had 5 stars when I was -86% and I have 5 stars now at -65%.

 

[Souplex]

This will need a lot of moderation behind it to prevent abuse, but it's good in theory. Maybe deputize some players to help filter through the reports in exchange for free Gold accounts?

 

[Spacemonkey430]

Good thing I won't be getting an X180. Can you say abuse? Especially when the source of any rage messages I get is usually guys or 10 year olds flinging obscenities over an accident.

And how about a system that actively opens the door to paying customers having their experience cut down because Microsoft is trying to force them to be "polite." They pay like everybody else, I mean come on.

 

[Dragonbums]

As many people have pointed out already this system as written right now has a lot of potential to be abused by the actual harassers leaving the victims in the "hell pit" so to speak.

However this is a problem that really needs to be addressed. Especially in Microsoft's case

Websites like Fat, Ugly, and Slutty should not have to exist because the site owners, and those who submit to them get harassed so much on a game they bought and played, thought it would be a delight to show those scumbags to the web.

I'm not savvy of Nintendo's way of handling it.
Which is heavy moderation, no online chat with people other than your friends, and games that do allow talking with strangers regulated to a very basic PM chat.
As an extra measure- the dreaded friend codes.
Solves the problem sure...but you know, very limiting.

What Microsoft should do is hire a decent size of online communications moderators that review reports, or at the very least are present in servers.

I have no clue how it is for Sony.

 

[Dragonbums]

I'm frankly shocked so many regard this as a good idea, whether they think it will likely work or not.

When I hear words like "we should be able to identify these individuals and herd them together" (paraphrasing) I don't get warm fuzzys.

I see people's free speech being ever so lightly censored so that they can only associate with "like minded individuals." While the good little boys and girls get to play in blissful ignorance, free of these colorful people.

Until they themselves trespass on what is then "acceptable" and find themselves lumped in with the rest of them. Are they going to segregate this group into smaller groups? Or will they put people that curse too much in with people that just behave questionably a few too many times? Will the trash talkers be in with the genuine bigoted, hate filled "I will go to your house murder and then rape you in that order" (and they mean it) people?

I really don't want to cheapen actual historical events by drawing parallels to them, but there is a shallow comparison to be made when a broad oversweeping authority (Microsoft) seeks to round up a herd of "undesirables" and concentrate them away from the normies.

Is it better in this instance that these individuals are almost universally regarded by "upstanding" players as complete asshats and ruiners of good times, and that they obviously aren't going to be punished physically for their behavior?

That in this case its more like rounding up criminals and placing them all in jail, away from civilians, than innocent people rounded up and so on?

Do we really think that its acceptable to have videogame police, rather than just banning people for violating the TOS?

Do we want to PAY multiple layers of charges a month just for the privilege of being assured that you won't deal with jerks? And what of the so called jerks that already paid good money for all the same services, do they have no recourse once they are "jailed" by the Bureau of Online Decency?

Why in the hell would they even bother buying Microsoft products, that are already WAY more costly than the alternatives, and be subjected to yet another one of Microsoft's (allegedly) syphilis-induced demented business ideas?

Why are so many of you applauding this proposal with only minor reservations upon its efficacy?

If you have such an issue of dealing with REAL people, and how they behave online that you would be willing to sign over your right to free speech and pay money to play in a bubble of PG goodness, then I guess this IS for you.

TLR Rabble! Rabble! Soylent Green is PEOPLE! DOOOOOOOM!

Perhaps it can work in tiers.
I'm pretty sure a majority of the people can handle the little noob, *****, douche talk.

However the more hostile ones that are sexist, racist, homophobic those are probably the ones they are talking about.
They can give the offenders warnings first to make sure it isn't just some user that let the language slip.
However if it's a repeated offender they will get lower and lower in the tier of bad language.

 

[Therumancer]

It seems like the guys doing Xboxone are doing everything they can to convince me to not buy their console.

One of my old complaints about the Xbox Live system was that it made it too easy for someone to nuked your reputation casually, and for their own gain. For example when playing "Soul Calibur IV" I ran into this problem where people would report me for "unsportsmanlike conduct" every time I beat them, especially if I broke a winning streak. This was pretty much par for the course for a lot of people playing ranked matches because they wanted to avoid anyone they suspected could beat them, since a complaint like this means you'd be unlikely to be matched against them again. This is also the only complaints I ever received on XBL, but it did lower by star rating (which is still a bit lower than the full 5 stars).

Unless this system is entirely run by live people who evaluate each case/rep hit individually after investigation, interviewing both parties, etc... which is of course impossible, I am 100% against it. It in of itself is rife for abuse and pretty much means you can get banished to "Griefer Hell" just for beating people in fighting games and such.

I've seen other complaints before, but consider the huge number of opinions about fighting games in particular and how vague something like "unsportsmanlike conduct" can be for example. If your going for a ranking (which I've never been great at to be honest, which actually makes this funny on some levels) the idea is to win, if you come up with something your opponent can't figure out a way to counter, of course your going to exploit his weakness and pound the crap out of him for the victory. Of course to the loser this might be seen as "unfair" or the result of using a "cheap character" especially if you keep using the same moves/combos/sequences that he can't figure out how to counter (which is a failure on his part, or perhaps on the part of the devs if something is unbalanced, but that is another entire topic of debate).

In short any kind of lasting penalties for an automated reputation/complaint system should be a no-no. On the surface you might think this will be used for people acting like twits on voice chat (being rude, racist, etc...) but reputation is general enough where a lot of things can effect it, and that isn't entirely what it will be used for... as people figured out years ago that complaining about someone who can beat you when your after ranks/achievements simply means you won't have to risk facing them again, so why not use it? Some people have been brutally honest about using the system this way.

One could argue that Rep/complaints could be disabled in any kind of match that can reward achievements or a recorded ranking, but given that this would pretty much involve pretty much everything people do, it would then become pointless... applying only to unranked/unrewarding "fun modes" where they exist.

At any rate, from the way it sounds, this is a big strike against Xboxone.. and oddly, I've never had similar problems playing on my PS-3 and I'm guessing that will continue onto the PS-4 unless they are about to change something here.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Is this going to be one of those systems where arseholes can gang up on people and mass report/downvote/whatever them into oblivion, with next to no oversight? It is, isn't it...

Considering what I've seen of Xbox Live community reporting and whatnot, that won't be the case. Microsoft does investigate what people report. I kind of doubt this will be an automatic system, but more a case by case review system, kind of like all those funny XBox Live ban stories that you see all over the Net.

 

[Rossmallo]

A system where assholes can actually reach out and harm legitimate, good players, as opposed to just messing with thier - let's face it - meaningless rep scores?

Unless this thing is heavily moderated, this is going to be a MAJOR issue. But...Honestly? Props to Microsoft on this one for at least trying.

Yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but at least there - ARE - good intentions this time.

 

[cefm]

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?"

You've just described the "Angie's List" business strategy.
http://buildingreputation.com/writings/2009/10/the_dollhouse_mafia_or_why_to.html

 

[Icehearted]

This sounds terrible. I can imagine a clan that doesn't like someone for whatever reasons (I've seen people repped to hell because they were not using the weapon the clan kept ordering them to use in one match) putting some poor gamer into a perpetual downward hellspiral of being griefed and down-voted by other players out to troll. The hands-off "let the community govern themselves" bullcrap creates a lord of the flies environment of bad behavior and empowering the nasties to harm the not so nasties playing online.

I just can't get how a company that gets all puffed up about their reputation for pioneering online can get so much of the important parts of it so wrong.