Slashdot Mirror
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?
With Halo 2, you have to go through a couple of menus to mute specific players. This ought to make it easier.
"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex, qwantz.com
Because, assuming Halo 3 does things the same way as Halo 2, it doesn't work like the same old PC FPS server. They threw all that decade-old stale stuff out the window.
When you play a game of Halo 2, you get your friends together in a group, if you desire, then you set it up to search for a game in a specific playlist - such as a 4 player Team Slayer (deathmatch) game. The system matches up your group against a group of other people, and then you play on a playlist-selected map with playlist-selected rules, such as a standard 50-kill deathmatch. After the game is over, you see results, then you go back and do it again. It makes sure you play against a variety of people and different game types. It uses the results to also give you a ranking, and matches you up against other people based on that ranking - you play people of your skill level.
It's about 100 times better than the standard PC server setup.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Halo 2 always had the ability to mute a *specific* player while in gameplay... it's just that it took about 3-4 clicks and a scroll or two. It was a little cumbersome, esp. in the middle of gameplay. It goes more to the fact of how annoying some people are online that if it can be shaved down to just 2 clicks and 1 scroll, we're in great shape.
I'm pretty sure that beyond it being a quicker-access, the rest of it is the same: meaning when the person is muted, he is muted forever and ever in your personal account preferences. And only in gameplay... post and pre game, everyone can be heard. They may have changed that, but if so they haven't spelled it out.
n/a
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
I present to you: John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."