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?
Towards Bungie's domination. I wonder if trashtalkers will eventually leave after they know they're not being heard.
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Vote kick/ban are always handy.
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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
You can always mute other players voices, but it usually means muting all other players. If there are games out there that allow you to mute specific players, they are few and far between.
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...
You can mute a player on x-box live today, but it is a tedious process. You have to break from gameplay to mute a individual. You really don't want to turn down the TV, it is nice to hear team mates.
...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.
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."
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"
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
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").
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.
You can't ban annoying assholes, the system makes half the coices for you and its 100 times better? You have an interesting definition of "better".
Actually, I'm one of those people that prefers competitive games to be more appreciative of the other person's skill than taunting over their lack thereof. You'd be exactly the kind of person that I'd enjoy the ability to mute. Life's too short to play with people that irritate you.
Don't like that? Deal with it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"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.
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.
i talked the the one girl on live a few weeks ago... turns out she's actually a dude.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
I'm pretty sure you can mute individual players from within a game of CS, just by tabbing up the player list and clicking on them. Takes care of the ones who think you want to hear their music...
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Yes. Remove the other players.
Question everything
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