Xbox One introduces Reputation system to oust 'jerk' players

[5ilver]

I've never felt better for not being a console gamer.

 

[veloper]

The whole system hinges on bad players being solitary misfits, but that is often not the case. Same as with real bullying, it's more fun and more effective when you outnumber your target.

 

[Wickatricka]

Lol I already got like 90% of people avoiding me on xbox live. Have no idea really what the point of the current system is and doubt that the new one will make any difference.

 

[LetalisK]

I think it's an interesting experiment and I hope it works. Not that we'll ever know if it does or not since those in the red will always claim they just got downvoted for winning, whether it's true or not. Though I suspect if someone phrases it as being "b3ing 2 1337", it might be a tell.

 

[UnnDunn]

The good thing about this new system is that it isn't based entirely on votes. The system takes lots of factors into account; whether you get muted a lot, whether you complete games, etc. And developers can submit their own player feedback based on the parameters of their specific games. For example, if you constantly drive backwards trying to crash into people in Forza 5, or you teamkill a whole bunch in CoD Ghosts, the game itself can track that and submit negative feedback on you. On the other hand, games could implement "MVP" voting at the end of every match, with the winning player getting a big reputation boost. Or if you play the objective in BF4, the game can reward that with positive feedback.

It is still going to be abused, but letting developers automatically submit feedback based on actual in-game behavior will help mitigate the abuse somewhat. Who knows, it might actually work this time.

A system like this makes me nervous because now rather than playing a game to just have fun, you are playing it to conform to developer expectations. I understand how team based games sometimes suck when some guy just goofs around, but othertimes having "that guy" who insists on only driving in circles can be kind of fun.

I doubt it'll be a problem if you just goof off every once in a while. But if you play like an asshat in every single match, then you might find yourself in trouble.

 

[lacktheknack]

The problem is that this is going to be abused straight away by trolls and sore losers.

The REAL problem is that people post unoriginal, uninformed opinions without bothering to read the OP.

OT: I think it's worth a shot. You can't get better algorithms until you test the ones you have.

 

[lacktheknack]

Eh, it's worth a try.

I don't think getting downvoted because you beat someone would be as big a problem as people seem to think. However, I can see someone developing a grudge, then jumping on 4Chan or the like and getting a whole bunch of people to downvote the crap out of them.

If they implement a simple logarithmic "importance" factor that refreshes every couple of days, that'll fix it. As in, if you receive sixty reports in one day, it'll have double the effect of getting ten. And it levels off from there, fast.

To do permanent damage to your account, the 4Chan attack would have to last for days. And, well... 4Chan doesn't have a long enough attention span for that.

They probably have done this, seeing how they're claiming that it only affects you in the long term, which supports a logarithmic algorithm.

 

[MCerberus]

I hope they do a League of Legends tribunal system where half of the report options are traps that 1. don't do anything to the person that you're reporting and 2. decrease the reporters 'weight' in the system.

You'd be surprised how many people still yell and report for 'unskilled' or 'refusal to communicate'.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

Why do people always lump all of Xbox Live into one community and say it's full of trolls and douchebags? It's like if I stated that the PC gaming community is horrid because I played League of Legends. I could understand if someone says the Xbox Live CoD community is awful but that doesn't really connect anything to people on Xbox Live playing Viva Piñata or Minecraft.

OT - Looks pretty interesting actually, I'm kind of curious to see where my reputation ends up with this system in place.

 

[Ed James]

"How many people do you know who actually file positive reviews on the 360, indeed how many have you done yourself?"

On the 360, if you don't do anything, it counts as a positive review to that player. There's no reason that this will not be the case on the One.

 

[Lightknight]

So... what of people gaming the system. Mass down-voting individuals and such? I'm not saying it's a bad idea but this could lead to the even worse effect of trolling regular players to inflate the jerk reputation side of things.

 

[rob_simple]

This power seems like it would be better placed in the hands of mods, who can observe players over a period of time; rewarding the good players and marking the bad ones.

No matter how many safeguards they put in place, there will always be a portion of the votes that are disingenuous --especially when a good player with more voting sway has a bad day and decides to take it out on someone who pissed him off-- so it doesn't really seem fair to me.

 

[Vegosiux]

You'd be surprised how many people still yell and report for 'unskilled' or 'refusal to communicate'.

Actually, people who are reported as "unskilled" don't get into tribunal, it just lowers their matchmaking rating so they're pitted against less skilled opponents.

So next time someone yells about "report for unskilled" just tell them they're giving the person they're reporting easier opponents.

 

[skywolfblue]

I know the problem you're all going to point out: the system is open to abuse/trolls. To prevent this, Microsoft have put in place a few safeguards. For example, if a community of people have a grudge on this one guy, they insist that their algorithm is advanced enough to detect if a player is getting a large chunk of downvotes at a time and will check to see if that community has actually played online with that player.

Sure it stops gank downvoting, but it seems like it might also stop everyone in the match downvoting a legitimately bad player.

The good thing about this new system is that it isn't based entirely on votes. The system takes lots of factors into account; whether you get muted a lot, whether you complete games, etc. And developers can submit their own player feedback based on the parameters of their specific games. For example, if you constantly drive backwards trying to crash into people in Forza 5, or you teamkill a whole bunch in CoD Ghosts, the game itself can track that and submit negative feedback on you. On the other hand, games could implement "MVP" voting at the end of every match, with the winning player getting a big reputation boost. Or if you play the objective in BF4, the game can reward that with positive feedback.

It is still going to be abused, but letting developers automatically submit feedback based on actual in-game behavior will help mitigate the abuse somewhat. Who knows, it might actually work this time.

Completing games is good.

But auto-feedback is a little worrisome. You get players either trying to "top the damage charts" or purposely killing their own flag carrier (or doing nothing and letting the enemy kill the FC to sweep in) in order to cap the flag and gain reputation points.

The problem is that this is going to be abused straight away by trolls and sore losers.

They wont work.

How many people do you know who actually file positive reviews on the 360, indeed how many have you done yourself?

Checking if they've played with the person is a nice touch but its still not going to stop a group of sore losers in a match filing poor reviews on a person.

I used to have a 360, I got reported for abusive language twice, only problem being, I didn't own a mic and I never message anyone.
Ie the system sucked.

^^ These two quotes are the crux of the whole xbox live problem. Nobody upvotes, everyone downvotes. And the trolls are downvoting right and left for completely made up reasons. I don't have a mic and don't message people, but i've got like 12 reports of abusive language. /Sigh.

The only real solution I know of to the problem is actual GMs, people who are paid to review the chat, voice, and game logs to see what really happened.

 

[AITH]

So...how exactly do you get back to green? I suppose it's quite easy to report someone for being an asshole, but is the other option similar to a like button? Perhaps it's just like a driver's license where over time you will lose marks against you.

I would be interested in seeing the impact this has on XBL subscriptions comparing the first few months of the Xbone release to down the line. Half the enjoyment trolls get is from trolling "the innocent". If they're all stuck together, they may just not renew Live.

 

[FoolKiller]

I take the cake in having someone pissed at me for stupid shit. Someone filed a complaint because we did well together i n a couple of games online and then I rejected his friend request... WTF?

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I for one wish that there would be some feedback to the system so that I know that my reporting has weight. Like the system actually telling me what action was taking against the person.

I was playing Full House poker on XBL and I joined a table where everybody was trying to play nice and proper, but this other guy was cussing up a storm, throwing obscenities at everybody as he went all in on every hand, saying that we weren't men if we didn't go all in on every hand. The obscenities weren't really what bothered me, the all-in every time was it. I can't stand people that play poker that way, because you can go all-in, doesn't mean that you do it every hand or that you should, there is no point to playing poker in the first place if you are just going to get your cards and then roll a big roulette wheel with the other player to see if you win.

I of course down-rep him, but I of course won't find out if anything happened to him. Seriously I wish there was some way to suspend such people from playing the games that they screw around like that in.

I love the boot team killer system that the Halo series has had, yeah it can be abused, but I've only used it to but people purposely doing it, and I've only been booted for accident team kills maybe a couple or three times out of the many times it has happened.

I also like the suspension system for people that constantly leave games if they are losing. It doesn't effect people that have to randomly leave or people that end up disconnected every once in awhile, but it clearly effects people that are sore losers.

 

[Zeckt]

What they don't realize is that all those negative people are in such huge numbers that they actually CONTROL xbox live and will have the power to gang up on somebody they simply don't like. This system will be abused.

 

[Bellvedere]

I think there's some obligation on MS's part to try to improve the overall tone of their online service otherwise they would implicitly be condoning the negative behaviour.

Even with the safeguards, the reputation system isn't troll proof, but when you think about it worst case scenario everyone ends up red flagged and its no different to if there was no system at all or the system currently.