Halo 3 To Have 'Mute the Jerk' Button 260
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?
Just one more step (Score:4, Insightful)
Vote kick/ban (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the reason... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a step in the right direction.
Re:Is this really new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just one more step (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as Halo multiplayer goes... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's always some jackass... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds all well and good, until some jackass decides to start muting everybody else just for the fun of bringing their points down.
Will problem players know? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why mute him??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Blame griefers, not age (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Just one more step (Score:5, Insightful)
-stormin
Re:huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vote kick/ban (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe Halo was their first? (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
Re:Bout time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bout time (Score:5, Insightful)
That tells us two things - that we still have a ways to go where race relations are concerned, and we have a long, long way to go where bigotry towards gays is concerned.
Re:Will problem players know? (Score:3, Insightful)
What I want is something similar to slashcode's degrees of separation. I want to have a foes list, plus friends of friends and foes of friends. Football suffers massively from idiocy online. From what I've heard, seems like all of the games do.
Re:Bout time (Score:2, Insightful)
In what universe do those two sentences not contradict each other?