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Halo 3 To Have 'Mute the Jerk' Button
Eurogamer is reporting on comments from the Bungie website. A feature for the upcoming Halo 3, that they've just announced, will be most welcomed by aging FPS players tired of hearing high-pitched squeals through their headsets. When playing an online match, players will be able to hit a button and then choose one of the gamertags playing the game. The result: a total mute on that player for the remainder of the game. They don't mention it on the site, but one would hope the Xbox Live servers are taking metrics on this activity, to be used in calculating the player's reputation. The more you mouth off, the worse you look to future players. Anyone have some other feature they think might make online gaming better?
Towards Bungie's domination. I wonder if trashtalkers will eventually leave after they know they're not being heard.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Vote kick/ban are always handy.
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I'm not a very active online gamer so please believe me when I tell you this question is genuine. Is this really a new feature? There's always the mute button on the TV/computer but I would think the ability to shut off voice contact with other players was already taken care of. Do other on-line games that allow voice contact offer this off button feature of is Halo breaking mainstream ground here? I don't know in practice how big a deal it is. I'm just surprised it's taken this long.
It's like manna from heaven!
A feature like this is long overdue for dealing with the assholes who seemingly dominate Xbox Live.
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20060 821
Too bad it didn't come out in time for Halo 2. I spent the better part of two matches listening to some ass yelling "eat a dick" every time he scored a kill. And "Fuck you, fag" everytime he got killed. Although, the upside of that scenario was that his own teammates actually turned on him, he was so annoying.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
just boot him... and block him from re-entering for 30 minutes... he might just get the hint...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
...I don't have Live and don't care to have Live. I used to play Half Life and Counter Strike online quite a bit, and I loved having the headset at first. But I tired of it quickly. For the most part, I enjoy single player games, because then I know I'm the only asshole I have to contend with.
This is a step in the right direction.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Why only mute for the rest of the game when you could mute them forever on the account. I wouldn't mind muting people if I got a nice long list of people who I never have to hear from again.
God spoke to me.
Now if they'd just put in a rewind / "I want the last 10 minutes of my life back" button for those all-too-frequent situations where all of the other players are whiny, adolescent idiots...
Steam-based games such as Counter-Strike have the option of muting in-game voice. Doing it on a player-by-player basis seems a natural progression of this. In fact from the first moment I heard someone yell down a microphone mid-game I have wanted this kind of feature.
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
as a ps2 and gamecube owner, WTF does "aging FPS players tired of hearing high-pitched squeals through their headsets" mean?
are we talking about not wanting girls on xbox live?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
...the single most useful step Bungie can take to make multiplayer more fun, more fair, and less frustrating would be to simply host the matches on Xbox Live rather than the users themselves hosting the matches. This would eliminate a lot of the cheating that goes on, like standby-ing, lagging people out of matches, as well as balancing the competition--probably anyone who plays a significant amount in matchmaking in Halo 2 knows about the edge that goes to whoever is serving the match on their system. Just having MS handle the match serving would make a tremendous difference.
...with Ventrilo (http://www.ventrilo.com).
My gaming group does not use the built-in chat functions for any of the games that we host. Instead, we use Ventrilo. This approach allows us much finer grained control over chat functions, including the ability to establish multiple channels, G- and R-rated channels, and password-protected channels. Our RCONs also have the ability to ban someone from the voice chat channels without banning them from the game (AND the ban applies to all supported games).
Non-admin players also enjoy a much richer array of configuration options, including fine-grained control over input and output audio settings...and, yes, the ability to mute a player. One can also download the "voice overlay" shareware program so that they can monitor who is speaking without leaving the game. I'm sure that Teamspeak (another popular PC-based chat client) has similar functions.
I suppose the in-game chat option is the path of least resistance and requires the least setup for a new player, but taking the time to adopt and configure one of the external programs is usually worth the effort. Of course, this advice applies to PC-based gaming only (as opposed to consoles).
Got to give Bungie credit for the effort though.
oh come on, screaming 12 year olds are annoying but what fun is a FPS online when you have to be polite. "Oh dear, you sniped me. Jolly good shot." Hmmm....nah ah, I don't see myself doing that. People shouldn't take it personally when when I say "What's up now, bitch!" and if they mute me for it, they're too sensitive.
Quake 3 had this 7 years ago, albeit for text only. You could boot the jerk too! Welcome to 1999 Bungie.
I dunno about this. I always had more fun playing "Jerk the Mute."
This guy's the limit!
but I wish my life could have one.
We used to joke that there should be a skip-the-shit button on most of the games. There's a lot of games where they make you sit through videos or storyline that doesn't really have anything to do with the game. A lot of time they are just trying to push a story into a game that doesn't really need a story, or the story is so bad, that nobody wants to listen.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It's much better than "Jerk the Mute"
I think the value of this feature will be in how it's implemented. For example, when you hit the button, sort the players by the number of bans that they have gotten in the current round, and then by who has been the loudest over the last minute, or something like that.
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In military radio lingo, it would be "squelch the jerk."
Sounds all well and good, until some jackass decides to start muting everybody else just for the fun of bringing their points down.
Fnord.
I think it's a great idea, especially if the muted player gets a notification of the muting and if the status shows up on any lists of players on the server.
It would be a good deterrent if they knew that multiple players considered them not worth talking to. Even better if it sends them into an incoherent rage that results in more and more people muting them, if you ask me. Nothing quite like a wave of unpopularity to send an immature kid off sulking.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The fact that developers dont consider allowing such a thing from the beginning, shock me. I suspect these people dont play games like this with the general populus.
I remember when voice was introduced to CS. It took forever to be able to mute specific players in a match. Why, i'll never understand. When I first HEARD they were going to offer it, I remember thinking "oh god..please let there be a mute option."
This is really nothing new, the function already exists in every 360 console. It just looks like Halo 3 will just be making it easier to access. If the game allows you to hilight the player and bring up their profile, there will be a mute option on the list. Choose that, and you are done with all of the annoyances. If you cannot pull up the player gamer profile from the game itsself: simply hit the "X" button on the center of the controller, bring up the recent players list, find the a-hole player and select their profile,then choose mute This has come in handy many nights with some of the trash talkers in Gears of War
If you could just automatically mute anyone not old enough to drink.
If it ever does have an effect on your stats, theres a 100 percent guarantee it will be misused. Get enough people on the server who are working together, and go to town ruining people's stats.
Thank you!
If I had any mod points I would mod your post up as informative. I just got a 360 a couple of weeks ago. I was playing Dead or Alive 4 with a friend Saturday night. We had two open slots for public players. One of the guys that joined was driving me batty and I was wishing I could mute him. I didn't know it was possible to do so. I think you have just saved my sanity in future games.
Just like counterstrike
Day of Defeat: Source allows muting individual players. The original DoD did as well, but it didn't work, so this is nothing new.
I'd like to see automatic punishment for problem players become standard. There are plugins for some games to slay people who shoot teammates in spawn, kick habitual team killers, mirror damage, and so on, but it's up to each server admin to install them and most don't do so. I'd especially love to be able to shoot teammates who block my line of fire while insulting me and screaming at me to give them the sniper class without it being counted as a team kill, but I doubt that's very practical.
All that being said, vigilant admins are usually enough to keep a server relatively free of griefers. A policy of banning problem players reported by trusted regulars seems to do the trick.
1) I assume you refer to the leaked *ALPHA* shots, so it's irrelevant.
2) Relevant how? Dedicated or not, i've never had a problem playing any 360 title on Xbox Live.
3) Have you played Halo / Halo 2? With 8 players a decent average lifespan is 2 minutes. 8 players is plenty chaotic enough, and if the game is designed around those numbers and it's fun who cares? It's an FPS, not an RTS, I don't need or want 100 people running around. 16 players on Halo 3 should be more than fine.
4) What feedback? Cite please.
5) You get what you pay for. The only people I hear complaining about the cost of Xbox Live are the people who don't have it. Those that do are quite happy.
Sony's online service is, to be blunt, shiat. Each games does its own thing, there is no integration to speak of, and there are no standards. Yes, it IS free. So is PSP and (most) PS2 online games. So is Wii and DS. The problem is they all suck badly online beyond the bare minimum basics.
I also own all of the systems i've just trash talked, including the PS3. Do you?
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
"A feature for the upcoming Halo 3, that they've just announced, will be most welcomed by aging FPS players tired of hearing high-pitched squeals through their headsets."
OK, so there may be some correlation between older players wanting more strategy-oriented comms, and younger players getting out of hand verbally, but it is by no means a "hey you kids, get off my lawn" issue! Please, at any age if there's someone on your team just swearing constantly, belittling other players, screaming, singing, or my personal un-favorite - putting the mic next to their stereo - it is distracting and annoying to others. You don't have to be old to hate idiots yelling into their mics, and you don't have to be young to act like a trash-talking jerk.
Then there are the folks who say they do it "cuz you other people take this game way too seriously man!". Except that there's plenty of us who don't take the game to seriously, it's just that when we signed on to play that was what we expected would occur, not some crapfest of screaming idiots who can't be bothered to actually play the game. If we're talking it too seriously by wanting to enjoy a couple matches then these griefers are taking the game way too UN-seriously by thinking that any behavior at all is acceptible by virtue of just showing up.
I think this is a long overdue enhancement to the system, right now you can mute these jerks but it's a bit unwieldy and can take too long when you're actually trying to concentrate on play. I'd also like to see them add a feedback options for people who quit early - or at least internal tracking that affects game matching queues accordingly. While I understand that every now and again some of us have to quit mid-match, there are lots of people that abuse it by quitting when the other team scores once, or they don't like the map, or the gametype, or.... etc. If someone starts ranking up a statistically significant number of "left game early" feedbacks they should have an automatic wait penalty added to any game queue, and make it big and obvious so they know why they're being sanctioned in such a way. Just my $0.02 as a frustrated weekend gamer.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
The thing is, when you get on there with a group of friends you really enjoy playing the game with, trust me, it's the most fun multiplayer experience you could have online. It's about as close as you can get to actually having a bigass split-screen LAN with all your buddies, without actually being in the same room with them. Considering the group of people I play Halo 2 online with live all over North America (and UK), we've only been able to get together once a year or so (usually for E3), but playing online on Xbox Live is the next-closest alternative.
Honestly the yearly fee for an Xbox Live "Gold" account is 100% worth it simply for the purpose of being able to play Halo 2 and other XBL games online with these friends of mine.
When you're on a team with the most kickass teammates, it doesn't matter how rude/disrespectful/immature the opponent players are - not only can they be muted easily, it just doesn't matter because we can all just laugh and keep having a lot of fun knowing we had a great time (usually winning, too) while the other guys are just wasting their time screwing around.
This is exactly why there's a site called www.2old2play.com ... Nothing better than a bunch of (potentially) liquored up gaming junkies with guns and headsets. Its so much more enjoyable to play with more mature gamers who are interested in the same thing. Sometimes that is objective-based, sometimes that is laugh-based. Either way you walk away from the experience with a smile on your face, instead of wanting to shoot the little retards for real. For anyone 25+ years old, its well worth the time to join up and add some good folks to your friends list.
I hate to quibble, but I have played an 8-player system link game of Halo with buddies, and it wasn't earth shattering. I'm one of the few that finds Halo grossly overrated.
Maybe I'd get into Madden, or NCAA online, or maybe GRAW. But people keep telling me that Halo online is the Holy Grail of gaming experiences. I'm guessing that they haven't played a whole lot of PC FPS games online before.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
If getting muted by another player will hurt your rep, how many griefers will start the game by automatically just muting everyone they are play against?
How will Bungie prevent people from being retaliated against by such players?
You can already mute any individual player on any Xbox Live game while still hearing/speaking with all others.
This is not news. Resistance Fall of Man for the PS3 already has this feature, and I'm SURE that there is prior art to that on different systems.
It's not Halo 3, but it's just as annoying.
.....and I'm not exaggerating. My kids are now picking up on the language and we've addressed the issue with him many times. I have some recorded clips of him (picked up from the living room) on poor quality consumer equipment as evidence. Then there's the rumble and explosions coming from the surround sound equipment he bolted to the basement rafters. Rafters which happen to connect through to my basement rafters (i.e. living room floor). My recording equipment can't pick those sounds up all that well, but it's loud to humans and there's enough gunfire and explosions to give me Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and I've never been on the front line before. As soon as I get enough suitable recording, I'm calling the police over one last time before I file a civil complaint.
My neighbor (I live in a duplex) can be heard loud and clear while playing Call of Duty. He must get fragged a lot because what comes through the wall is:
"You F****** jerk, f****** gay, f****** f***, f****** bastard, F***, I shot you f****** first, f****** d***"
This isn't a kid or anything playing the game. It's the 45 year old head of household acting this way.
One thing that really gets me is when people even unintentionally "mic bomb" you. You know, feedback, having a microphone turned up too loud, all that stuff. I wish that the server could detect when a sound coming in was way too loud and just clip it automatically. Anything more than say +5 or +10 db muted at the server. That shit sucks and is usually painful.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Highest-rank players should never have host. Best skills + no lag = waste of everyone else's time.
Remove the lunge from melee, or at least don't allow sword-whores that aren't connected with the ground to change direction and lunge another fifteen feet just because their reticule went red.
That said, adding a second to the sword-draw makes sense, too. Someone can be airborne, take a shot, switch to the sword, lunge, and get the kill before touching the ground again.
bah.
I'm a PC FPS player, I always knew that console FPSs were a bit behind but..no mute? and this is the most popular game for the xbox? thank god I didn't get it!
Once x number of people ignore you (percentage of total in game at time), you get ejected - and barred from re-entry while the percentage of those that ignored you remain in game.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Could somebody explain this? Do people physically speak to each other online, while playing games online? If so, why? (Every time I attempt an online game, I invariably end up running into hordes of pre-teens, so I don't play any online games).
I don't respond to AC's.
This is all over the big news sites. Why? IRC has had /ignore and Usenet has had the kill file since the dawn of time. The ability to ignore stuff you don't like is hardly a big new addition to the internet.
At most this is a UI revision to a videogame sequel.
Agreed. I've had many times the fun playing Quake I, II, and III than I've ever had playing Halo. I just don't get why people like it so much.
How is this news? Per-Player muting has been a standard feature of Xbox Live since day one. I'm quite sure every game with Live support is required to have it.
It would be nice if they also included metrics to see who is team killing and perhaps suspend the account for a certain time, and or delete in entirely.
Come on man we all know the internet is a fad!
"A feature for the upcoming Halo 3, that they've just announced, will be most welcomed by aging FPS players tired of hearing high-pitched squeals through their headsets. When such a voice is heard a hand reaches out of the console, grabs the gamer's testicles, and gives them a swift downward pull. This has been scientifically proven to decrease the high pitched voice commonly associated with pre-pubescent tweens." Sounds fine to me.
This could be useful for silencing those cuntbags with an annoying robot-like voice.
sudo eat my shorts
> I'm SURE that there is prior art to that on different systems.
... no one said they were trying to patent it (though it is Microsoft, so maybe "yet" is appropriate).
I'm sure there is. In fact I remember doing this back when I played Counter Strike (right after they introduced mic use). But prior art is really a quite irrelevant concept for this story
The point of this story is that the next Halo is getting a fix for something that bugs a lot of people about the current version.
I have to say that I've needed to mute others much much less in Gears of War than Halo2 because I've found the trashtalking to be far more profane and interesting.
They could call it "Everyone jump on the asshole" or something more PG-rated
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I was kind of noting that, myself. I've been playing Ghost Recon quite a bit lately, and discovered that indeed, you can mute people with the console. The game doesn't even have to let you pull up their gamertag; just hit the glowy X and find their tag from the list of people you're playing with or have seen recently, then mute them there. The other day some little rat bastard was singing and spouting crap into the mic constantly, so everybody started talking about how to mute players and muting him til the non-pubescent little shit left.
I've played PC FPSes pretty much religiously since Doom came out (going so far as to installing Doom on the school computers and getting banned from the computer lab a couple times as a result). In high school years I used to come home from school every day and pretty much play Quake 1 for the rest of the day. The same trend continued for years with other games until recently where every fucking FPS is a rehash of stuff I've already played extensively. Halo 2 is something a little different, and a big part of multiplayer gaming for me is the enjoyment of playing a game with some friends - it really makes the difference between "pretty cool" and "totally fucking awesome", for me. While I don't expect that other people might have the same experience, that happens to be mine. I used to say "why the hell do people even buy consoles? PCs are so much better, you have better/more control, way more software (which you can pirate), you can do way more with them..." but, playing Halo 2 has changed my opinion on consoles...
Anyway, in the end, if you like it, you like it.. if you don't, you don't... Some people just don't "get" Halo and don't see the big deal. Doesn't matter to me, I think it owns and I'll keep playing it. Meanwhile UT2029 and Battlefield 3042 (and further derivatives) can go to hell.
Yes. Remove the other players.
Question everything
In other news: It has been confirmed that Halo 3 will have a button that you press which will make Master Chief jump. Details to be announced at a later date.
One thing I've noticed that's common with those who DO think that Halo is "DA BOMB", is that it was their first FPS multiplayer experience. My brother, who is younger by 2 years, mentioned to me that Halo was the big game on campus when he was in school. You could apparently walk down the halls and hear the raucos sounds of frat boys lobbing plasma grenades and cursing at their friends. For me and my friends, it was Counter-Strike on the PC (and the sounds of players purchasing guns at the beginning of each round). So we take a look at Halo and think, "Ahh, that's interesting. An FPS on a console. Neato." It's cool, but not exactly earth shattering. (Besides, we played other FPS games, like Goldeneye, quite a bit already)
I do think that one thing that the whole Xbox Live experience has done, though, is a natural migration of one-room LAN and System-Link parties, into being able to play from your own home. Now that my friends and I have "grown up" (no longer living close together in college), being able to simulate some aspect of that FPS multiplayer experience is handy. Obviously it has its upsides (being able to play with a friend across the country) and downsides (having to listen to whiny 12-year olds and their smack talk).
-- jchenx
Because it was the first high-profile, next generation FPS that was dedicated to a console? Frat guys are an important market, you know
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
If such a system were created to rate people who had muted by other players in the game, it would be abused. Arrogant, snooty players would use it to harm newbies they didn't care about, thus ruining someone's reputation for no reason before they even had a chance to play much.
"Anyone have some other feature they think might make online gaming better?" 1) Make a PC version. I much prefer a keyboard and mouse when playing first person shooters. 2) For the PC, make a text swear word censor feature. I don't want to listen to other players, but on the PC I would like to type comments and read comments. The user could create a local list of words they consider objectionable (like "shit" or whatever), and those words would appear censored, like "Holy $%#!".
You nailed it.
You like Halo 2 more because of your friends. It is easier to play with your friends because of Live. The game isn't better, the method of meeting up with your friends is.
Grabbing a router, pulling computers together and LAN gaming is a chore for many.
Setting up something like TeamSpeak and meeting online via the internet is a chore for many.
But it was around first, and in many ways allows for more freedom (not to mention is free as opposed to paying for Live).
I'm not discounting that you have fun with your friends online playing Halo 2. I'm discounting whether or not Halo 2 is the greatest game EVA!
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
...is what Nintendo need to do. Scrap the friend codes idea. Implement something like this. I'm sure that must be possible, if not in the Wii and DS, at least in their successors.
Nah, Halo 2 definitely isn't the best game ever. There are elements that annoy all of us. That said, it's a very fun game with unique aspects that I enjoy. Great atmospheres, music, storyline and concepts that I enjoy. That's all my personal preference stuff. But the big thing with the multiplayer is that there isn't any other game where you can just boot up the Xbox, throw on your headset and be playing some mega fun intense games with all your buddies within a couple minutes. That's the big thing. TeamSpeak & Ventrilo have issues such as cross-platform issues, router/NAT issues, someone having to run the server (altho we have a very high speed dedicated machine), all that crap. Halo 2 just works, and works immediately.
;)
OK, plus there's the aspect that all of the friends in our group that play on Halo 2 are big fans of Bungie's previous games like Marathon, Myth and Oni.. A bunch of us are in the photos on that bungie.net article I linked
Just make sure they have an Allow Discussion of Chocolate Milk filter so that hilarity may ensue.
I think this will be more useful to me for muting people whose volume is set too high. I always seem to find someone whose mike isn't squelching either the background hiss or their game volume. This way I can just mute them and if everyone does and they can see it they will (hopefully) adjust their configuration.
There has been a way to mute people since like, Tribes 1. When CS source came out, they moved the mute player option into menus where quite a few people couldn't find it. This gave me a great opportunity to hook up my record player to the Mic-in socket and play everyone oldies over that POS in game VOIP system. Good times.
I'm waiting for the first post rambling about freedom of speech...
Relevant Link for the win.
How is this a great feature...you can already mute players in Halo 2. Perhaps reporting the little squeeling, music playing, f***tards is the better solution.
It's as if many adolescent Halo n00bs cried out and terror... and were suddenly silenced >: ).
...never mind all that, does it run on Linux ?
Dear Mother of Jerk, We here at Bungie are proud of the role we play in the evolution of on-line gaming. As we should. But enough about us and onto the reason for this letter. It has come to our attention that you are raising a 'jerk' in your household. So please accept this complementay bar of Bungie soap from us and the rest of the on-line community. We also want to express our sincere hope you will start to bring your A-game to parenting. MasterChief
In my opinion, the most annoying thing is when you wait 2-3 minutes for the game to start and a guy on your team is killing himself repeatedly. Usually this can be solved by playing unranked games, but I like the challenge of playing against people with equal skill. Ranked games do a pretty good job of this, except for when idiots reduce their rank by killing themselves repeatedly so they can "xXXX pwn n00bs XXXXx". You can boot people for killing their teammates, but not themselves.
While I'm sure this would just lead to the same idiots running at the other team screaming "KILL ME!", it might help a little at least. Maybe, after 4 suicides, anyone on your team can boot you. That's twice the number of allowed betrayals.
Some guy recorded by his brother (I think) during his Halo2 rage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wOTC5AYdw (Croyt's anger)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eitTlsoG4g (Croyt's rage)
...they, um, have some freaky-ass fetish bordellos?
People can say 'fuck you fag' after the kill, but it's different when you hear the barages of 'fuck you nigger' jarring from your television set.
Look, I understand you might get offended at things you hear or see but let's be clear about one thing:
We have freedom of speech in this country (USA) and only you can let yourself be offended. Other people can not offend you unless you let them offend you, no matter how hard they try. It is an act that only plays out in your mind because of something you saw or heard.
I am sorry, but I get tired of people putting their "offended feelings" on me to prevent. It isn't my job and I don't care. And surely, you get to react however you want to react. Deal with it however you deal with it but I don't care to talk about how or why you got offended. It just doesn't matter.
And with tools like this (mute), you should hear less and less "offensive" material but somehow, I suspect that when this word -nigger- comes up again, we'll hear the same cry of being offended. Nobody ever stops to think if they stopped FEELING offended, then they wouldn't be offended.
Don't you think it would be more fun to jerk the mute?
Now that reputation thing might be a little too harsh. But you could do some "matching" behind the scenes. (I don't own a 360 and I don't know XBL, but it might be an idea for multiplayer games in general) There are people who shout/curse a lot (but at no one in particular), sore losers who get personal, idiots who shout at people for shouting... but also good people you wouldn't immediately put on your buddy list but who you also would like to meet again. Also, maybe jerks don't mind playing with other jerks. Now let's say you can't directly select a server to play on, just set up your preferences (map, game type, maximum ping, ...) and the network (or lobby server) selects the server for you. This would enable some algorithm (call it 'jerksort' ;) ) to find a group of people matching your rating (players rate other players on 2-3 attributes during a game or after each round).
Best case: you meet people you like or who like you.
Worst case: nobody likes you, but you constantly meet new people (players who haven't rated you yet) or people who share your character traits.
Average case: you meet people like yourself and you are less likely to meet someone you don't like again.
Of course this kind of thing only makes sense with a good user database and lots of players and servers. You could also add transitive relationships to the evaluation (if your friend likes/hates someone, you'll probably like/hate that person too).
Oh, and you wouldn't see your own ratings.
You want to piss off and psych out your opponent, so you use the words you think are most likely to upset them. I'm amused that you think 'fag' is OK but 'nigger' isn't.
Blar.
You chalk up enough pissed-off points your character is sent to the prison servers. Exactly the same world but with nothing but punks populating it.
in addition to the mute feature, i would like to see some sort of tag added to player nicks indicating they are a TK'er. TK'ing, or teamkilling for those who live in a cave, can be a real problem in some online fps genres. i think a vote like feature could be added to help others be warned of notorious TK'ers. have it change their nick to something like, Azzhatphreak to Azzhatphreak-TK or something similar. the format would need to be developed as there might be a clan out there with TK as it's initials, but you get the idea.. thanks, stoneyface XC
Seriously, console developers need to look at existing markets (ie, PC) so they stop making the same old tired mistakes in the online space. Shit, most PC developers need to do it to.
Trying to protect other games against asshats is something you need to seriously factor in in any online game. There's just too many people out there with too much spare time and not enough respect for others.
and the player names are preserved session to session.
And muds had (have?) "energy" that is required to shout to the world. So spammers can only be annoying every five minutes or so. I would really love it if bzflag implemented that-- everyone gets one or two shots at talking to the group, then there's a 2 or 3 minute reload time to talk again. Seems like it would be easy to do since you could essentially copy the code involved with shot reloading.
I'm bunnyluv in bzflag.
People screwed with on xLive (specially Halo2):::
"niggers"
jews
blacks
mexicans ("wet backs")
non-USA players
women
kids ("balls haven't dropped")
I've heard so many combinations of these insults, you just get "de-sensitized" to it.
Shit just flies in Halo2.
Doesn't make it "right"... but does it make it "wrong"?
Yes... usually, it's kids... with anonymity.... speaking crap.
But... what the fuck... I don't think we'll be winning this.
Something interesting, what another poster said...
To have "Stats" for the mute button... like, you can see how many people have muted your filthy mouth.
On another note, and one I'm sure is shared by various people, but I haven't seen yet...
I've met some really cool people on xLive.
Some young kids ("squeaky voice").
Some older guys, like me (25).
Some, even older...
Some women (not that many).
Again, you meet some cool people... add them to your friends list... probably play again in the future.
Something I like to say once in a while, just before starting a match (with 3 unknown people - TeamSlayer)
"Hey, if we win this one, I'll buy you guys a beer!".
That usually gets some laughs...
Some, "team-ness" going.
On a side-note: I'm sorry for using the word "fuck" too much. Not that I say it against someone... it just helps to relieve the sniper bullet I received in my helmet just now. Sorry.
How about a feature that will allow you to stab another player in the face over the Internet?
I think the big problem with most online games is there is no accountability from one server to the next. You can be a huge asshole, because if you're kicked or banned, there's always another server out there.
I'd like to see a system just like Slashdot's Karma system. If somebody mutes you, your account gains Bad Karma, across all servers. Other players can set a threshold for Bad Karma, and if you exceed it, you're automatically muted for them. Bad Karma could fall off you (slowly) over time, until you're more or less in good graces again. Those players who continually abused the voice-chat would hover in and out of the average threshold, muting themselves for days at a time.
I'd also like to see a system in PC gaming where X number of bans for cheating gets your CD key/SteamId/whatever added to a centralized black list for a week. Each time your name comes off the black list, it should take one less ban to get your name back on.
...that way I could pretend that the guy that kicking my ass isn't 20 years younger than me.
It's called KICK. I play online games with my brother and 3-4 of our best friends growing up. Now that we're all in our mid-20s and living in different parts of the country, it's as close as we can get to a pickup basketball game. We make sure that one of us is ALWAYS host. That's how we ensure that any overly annoying/racist/squeaky/teamkiller/spawncamper/wha tever people leave the room quickly and don't ruin it for everybody.
Since we always keep out those types of players, we generally have full rooms and people are always messaging us to try and get in just because they don't want to deal with the jerks. By us forcibly removing these people, it's improving the gaming expereince for everyone in the room.
We don't want to have to kick anyone, and generally we give fair warning. I would almost bet that these "kids" we end up kicking somehow think its cool in their Ritalin soaked brains. I imagine their inner monologue goes something like ...
OmGZ0RZ teh n00b2 h@d 2 kiks me bkuz ima 2 much pwnZ0r2 4 d3m f@g0t7z!
XBL sure has its share of issues with NAT setups and voice chat, many modern FPS titles on PC have built-in voice support (UT2004, for instance), and there are plenty of servers online you can say "Meet me at X" for.
There's nothing here that's beyond just "I prefer the X-Box", really. Don't get me wrong-- I have one, I also have a PS2 and a half-dozen other consoles. My point is that there's really nothing in the XBL experience you can't already do on PC, but there's a HUGE supply of idiots on the microphones on XBL and there's the controller (that could be a positive or negative, depending on your opinion of keyboard and mouse)