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[PA Comic] Friday, July 5, 2013 - Metamofo
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
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No, what Extra-Credits brought up was to create situations where accounts were restricted in their initial communication with in a game for a period of time.
Essentially the guy can start muted in voice but not chat and if he seems civil enough in chat you can un-mute his voice. Literally all it'd do was save people time muting toxic individuals and put a bit of hassle on anyone falsely under the system for a week or so.
Microsofts idea is basically to add 'being nice/being a dick' or more likely 'getting voted down for random reasons by randoms' as a factor to the matchmaking which is an entirely different and stupid level of punishment because it has a pretty big impact on the game. Especially if you factor in that the other quirk of reputation currently is to avoid you being match made with the player to begin with and how people already use that as a way to avoid playing with people who are performing better than them.
Add this to the fact that if you read pretty much any set of statistics from Riot, who've gathered a ton of them with regards to helping run their tribunal system (that honestly, is pretty damn good) and you'll see the one thing you want to avoid is putting someone whose mildly negative or neutral in with other negative players. It doesn't re-form them, it makes them much, much worse and drags the community down as a result.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
But this is different, in this case where you move them to this gamer purgatory if they want to play a game after they have been segregated, they won't be prompted to buy a new copy and go through the slow process of being banned again. They can just continue to play with people who are deserving of their vitriol.
And furthermore, there is no slow process of banning them when they buy a new game, they start pre-segregated for all time, no matter what the game is.
I like this idea. It removes the bad influences which are the cause of new 13 year olds telling me how they had sexual intercourse with one or more of my parents, which hopefully will result in fewer new hellspawn being created and therefore reduce the need for this service going forward. Destroying the problem at the root as it were, while still taking their money. Because not selling games to reprehensible human beings would be just silly, amirite?
My only question is why this hasn't been tried before. We already match people based on level, or win/loss ratio, why not their reputation level too?
I'm gonna write up a longer response to this with sources when not on my phone but someone has: Dota2, people are always complaining about being put in low priority MM for basically having a bad game or being stuck with an asshole premade.
I haven't really followed Riot's efforts on these issues closely, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason that segregating the jerks into their own little community is actually bad. Assuming your system can do it pretty accurately (a big if, granted), I think I'm pretty much in favor of it.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Seems like it's pretty easy to fix that problem. Give people two reporting options "This person is an asshole" or "This person sucks at the game." Of course the "This person sucks at the game" button just reduces the chances that the players will be matched together on the same team again in the future. The "This person is an asshole" button does the same thing and eventually puts that person into gamer purgatory if a lot of people click it. (So if you are also an asshole you'll be more likely to be grouped in the future if you're both in purgatory.)
Just let it be known that if you click the "asshole" button and you are also an asshole, then you are more likely to see that player again on your team in the future since assholes are matched together. If you click the "sucks" button and you are an asshole then you are less likely to ever see that player on your team again. Because that's what people use the report button for, more or less.
I don't know why you would be interested in reforming these people anyway. From a business perspective, they are still giving you money and they are kept away from the majority of your playerbase who would otherwise be offended by them and stop giving you money. This is not the criminal justice system where a criminal will be let out of prison at some point and therefore should be rehabilitated. This is more like Escape from New York, where the assholes are kicked out onto their own apocalyptic hellscape where they can discuss the sexual conquests of others parents to their heart's content. It'll be OK as long as the president's airplane doesn't crash in there.
I know some people buy XBL just to be abusive, they are probably children who are violating the ToS to begin with or people who just have sour moods on the internet. But in how many other instances are people who are otherwise decent people being lumped into the "jerk" category for no better reason than the system having only two extremes? It's nice to say "Well only jerks are playing with other jerks, so hopefully they all track each other down and eat one another" when you don't consider that those are other people playing. Those are other people who actually may be very understanding people most of the time.
It seems to me like it's giving control of the prison to the in-mates. If everyone's theory is right, and this will segregate people based on how much of a jerk they are, how do we verify this? How do we ensure that putting these players with other negative players isn't just making a bad problem worse? People reporting them just makes the players in that tier see more of them, so what recourse does someone have if they're in that tier to begin with?
On the other hand, if most people who comment on XBL are correct, and XBL is practically ruled by the assholes with an iron fist, then what good does a karma system do? Bands of trolls who stick together would be able to completely ruin otherwise perfectly functional players by just collecting their votes and never not-playing with their circle of friends. From my (extremely limited) experience with XBL, most of the 'jerks' are actually just bands of friends who don't care about other people. They're akin to schoolyard bullies who do it because they enjoy the attention from their friends. How can a karma system hurt these people? They're never not going to be playing with one another, and other players are just a mere nuisance in their playtime.
I do like this idea though, an option to just never group that player in the same game ever again would probably offer more positive results. There's still a chance that reporting players will just select both, or worse, it will create two "undesirable" pools of players in which none of them can escape.
The general idea of creating a player purgatory just doesn't sit well with me. Eventually, all the 'jerks' will be playing with other 'jerks' and all the poor players will have no one to learn from except other poor players.
I don't really see a problem with that. This isn't real life, it is a game which is meant to be enjoyed. We're basically talking about people's leisure time. If the jerks are playing with the jerks then that's fine. Since this system is across games, there will be a lot more data to backup what pool they are placed in, so I don't see someone getting put into the purgatory simply because they had a bad day or two. It would really be a long term thing. So as long as there is a way to petition to get out of the purgatory if a person took the personal responsibility to stop being an asshat, I don't see a problem with that.
As for poor players not being able to learn from other poor players, again, where is the harm? This is a leisure activity. If you're having fun as a poor player playing against other poor players, what's the problem? It's better that you are fumbling through the game with other people who are also fumbling through the game, rather than constantly getting beaten soundly every time you log in.
Okay, now (because as discussed, the pre-mades are assholes) the pre-mades select that you are an asshole, you are now branded an asshole by the system and are stuck playing with toxic players. As said toxic players who reported you play majoritly together as a team they never get enough reports in to be put in asshole domain. Good job, you have tried to stop internet assholery by relying on internet assholes (a problem your system admits exists) to do the right thing.
As to why you'd be interested in re-forming these people: Because most people who are expressing negative behaviour are doing it as a one off due to external circumstances or are pushed to it by being immersed in an environment that's already toxic (like say, an asshole hell). If you create a system that leaves players interacting with mostly other positive or neutral (IE, someone who either says little or tends to adjust to the mood of the given match) then you create a significantly better community and a more enjoyable experience for everyone. Also actually, someone whose in asshole bin and knows it but was usually a neutral player who had a bad day or run afoul of a false judgement is perfectly likely to quit the game or at least lose confidence in your game and as a result spend less money because you just stuck them in an environment where they don't get to have fun.
I don't have it to hand but I'm sure another League player can point you to some of Riot Lyte's longer posts. Dude goes into a LOT of detail and statistics analysis regarding what tends to generate negative behaviour (shockingly it isn't usually 'no reason but to troll') and it's well worth a read if you're interested in this kind of thing.
EDIT: Didn't see this:
Because like I said, most jerks aren't jerks and putting those people into that community only makes it worse and creates a larger pool of genuine, actual jerks who don't give a fuck about others in the context of the game.
90% of muting systems (both XBL's current rep system and League's muting system) also put them as low priority to be matched with you if you personally report them. It's why on XBL you hear of players who have currently got a pretty low rep score for basically being too good at the game, people 'report' them for winning too hard because they don't want to play against them again.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Yeah but the point is that someone doing it once is likely not an actual issue and they probably aren't actually a problem for your community. If you put them in with a group of other, genuine toxic players and let them know that they're there you can almost garuntee that they'll become toxic players in the long term.
It's like if your solution to a friend lying to you once was to constantly lie to them at every opportunity. As much as you might think you're 'teaching them a lesson' all you're actually doing is justifying the behaviour as a social norm for the environment.
Except it wont be. Because as much as anyone can say the system wont be accurate you can garuntee they'll at least have a higher percentage of the genuine problem players who should just be banned. Plus you know, you've just told all those people they're in asshole land so they might as well go nuts. Even if it's essentially the same mix of people minus say 10% of the population turned from nice guys into dicks giving people an excuse for their behaviour of 'that's what it's like down here bro' isn't helpful.
First off the person on the other side of Live is not my friend. They're a stranger. What's more, going off the system Microsoft has proposed, they're a stranger who's developed a constant pattern of being a dick. So for your analogy to be accurate it'd be like if some guy was just constantly lied to everyone he met and everyone decided to not hang out with him.
And I've got zero problem with that.
Sure, unless your method of detecting lies is to ask a group of people that (by creation of the system) you're admiting are already probably liars.
So it could be people who are actual problem players or it could be people who play too well, play badly, have their jokes taken the wrong way or are effected by people just flat out giving 'joke' reports on them.
Never mind that the way you get out of the jerk pool is to patiently suffer through it without being reported again. While in the Jerk pool, full of guys that presumably are the sort who'd happily report you for a joke. I wouldn't want to use that service in any situation. Some people complain that they're injustly caught by the tribunal system (and in most cases are shown to be taking massive amounts of piss) but in that case they simply have to not play for three or so games if it's a first offense and then they're back to playing as normal. If Microsofts system has even a little failure rate in terms of falsely throwing people to the wolves the time it takes to get up (unless really, REALLY short at which point the punishment probably means nothing) is a big worry.
I don't see why they don't just copy League's Tribunal system:
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/The_Tribunal
It works well and relies on verification of players detached from the heat of the match to prevent false reports. Plus it creates a situation where over half the people punished by it (with a three day to a week ban) never need to be punished again due to improved/restrained behaviour. All without the need to create a situation where you are literally chucking players in a cess pool.
well, okay: what kind of assumptions are we making about how this system actually works? I am picturing a system where everybody winds up with some sort of feedback score, and then matchmaking uses that score to match you with people with similar scores. So getting a few negative reviews on the one day you're just in a really bad mood shouldn't be a huge deal, and as one gets lower on the scale you'd actually expect to get fewer negative reviews (since people who do things like use racial slurs over ingame voice as a matter of course are, presumably, not reporting others for doing the same.) Perhaps negative reports could "decay" over time, pushing even the worst offenders' score back toward the median assuming they tone down their behavior. Maybe reports carry less weight if they're made by a person who has a low score, etc.
A potential danger of a system like that is that the higher end of the scale becomes a feedback loop; this happens a lot on user-moderated forums. But that's probably not a big problem if you're just using the system for matchmaking, since the floor to be matched with the 'best' players can just be made relatively low on the positive end of the scale.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Here's my problem with the system; When I'm doing poorly, my reputation is fine. If I chance upon a winning streak, my reputation takes a big hit. I see people getting punished for playing well in that system.
Yeah, that's how it's working. Though the scale of how fast it climbs back up isn't clear yet.
The issue is because there's no filter to actually determine what a legitimate report is it's possible for you to get your rep tanked because you played with a pre-made who all collectively decided you deserved a report for not doing exactly as they say (where as said group of friends is also mostly immune to retaliation reports AND cares little for the punishment). That and it's a dumb punishment and MS should just be handing out bans to toxic players instead.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Possibly, even then I'd much rather they just chucked a ban on people who are problematic. Taking shit away from the monkey seems a better tool than giving them a playpen full of monkeys to throw shit in.
Heck it wouldn't surprise me if the Xbox One was able to literally just go into lock out for three days if they wanted it to.
Oh, the screaming if they did that. (Even if it was deserved.)
Even before party chat, I would plug in a muted headset with the volume dialed down to zero and let it hang. I get relative peace and quiet so I can focus on the din of battle, and the randoms get to believe they have a receptive audience. Everybody's happy.
As for the reputation system, I see the same thing happening. The votes are always for things other than skill, though, because the kind of person who will give negative feedback because someone had the gall to shoot them while they were standing in the open in their LMG's long-ass reload animation is never going to admit they're doing so because you're "too good" at the game. And equally, they're not saying you "lack skill" because that might put them up against other good players. So instead, it's feedback of the totally misleading variety. "Unsporting," "quit early," etc.
Well yeah, but if it's anything like the people who are punished by the Tribunal over half the people punished this way wouldn't ever need additional punishing. Which isn't to say they'd reform (because the system only catches the very lowest percentage) but is to say that whatever their behaviour now it's either more subdued or less frequent in it's occurrence.
What the hell are you supposed to do about that kind of person? I mean, for once, I can deck him in real life, but I don't think that will get the point across.
You ban them from whatever service you're running.
You can't stop genuine ass hats if it's what they enjoy, but you can prevent them playing with you longer than the minimal amount of time it takes to identify them.
what you just described is the walking talking definition of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. your brother gets to act out in complete anonymity, with out any "real" penalty's. get banned from a server? move on to the next. my guess and hope is this is "learned behavior" from his online gaming. that trolling, telling people you fucked their mothers, is what he thinks is expected. you might want to sit him down and explain that the gaming community at large, and you specifically don't care for this behavior. I doubt he will change his behavior though if he continues to play the same games, with the same friends who encourage and reward such behavior. that encouragement and reward from his peers is what he revels in.
It's highly possible. He's a medieval combat club guy, and did mention that he felt a whole lot less angry when he wasn't playing League of Legends..
But yeah. Sitting him down won't get him very far because he's fully aware of what people think out there.