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That is the most obvious solution, and completely wrong. If you give people the ability to block others from being matchmade with them, they will use it to kee

That is the most obvious solution, and completely wrong. If you give people the ability to block others from being matchmade with them, they will use it to keep themselves from being matched with players who play poorly, but aren't at all toxic. At higher skill ranks, where the player pool is small and there is a high chance of being matched with the same players repeatedly, it has huge opportunity for abuse. It is a good demonstration of why it is a hard problem, because you can't just implement the most naively obvious solution: you have to design against the abuse-case.

Joe-Z 9y ago
I'd much rather have a system which may fail for a small subset of players, than having a game company tell me what constitutes good or bad behaviour. This is a problem which _can't_ be solved by a central authority. That's like asking the police to go around making people be nice to each other: Yes, they can control the most blatant abuses (IRL: violence, theft, etc. -> Online: Cheating, DDosing, etc.), but they will never be able to - and should never have the right to - control for every possible sub-optimal communication. You yourself have the tools to do that (IRL: go away, call someone out, etc. -> online: Mute, Leave the game, etc.)
- philipov 9y ago
  I'm not sure whether you're agreeing with me or not, because, while I don't think it's possible to solve this problem using a central authority, it is a problem that affects a very large portion of the playerbase, so your dichotomy is false. It is not a problem that affects a "small subset of players"
  - Joe-Z 9y ago
    No the "small subset of players" was referring to top players that would be affected by people misusing blocking other players. As for all the players "affected" by this problem: People should learn to chill out. In a virtual, anonymous setting, some people will use the opportunity to be mean to you. That's why muting and block was introduced. I don't get the big deal, even though a big number of people seem to be "affected". Actually, one of the wort statements in the whole article: "There’s no IRL and online anymore. This is just all reality now." WTF? That is the _point_ of creating virtual spaces or play per se. If I want a dose of reality I might as well watch the news and do some bookkeeping.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  And the games companies, the ones making the games, disagree. They believe that this toxic behavior is affecting more people than the alternative options are, and so they want to nip it in the bud.
jotm 9y ago
Yeah, I didn't think about that. I just played for fun, not competitiveness.
SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
I think a better solution (better than what currently exists) would entail centralizing gaming profiles which would require you to share profile data across games and game companies so bad behavior in one game is reported to all of your games.

Joe-Z 9y ago

I'd much rather have a system which may fail for a small subset of players, than having a game company tell me what constitutes good or bad behaviour. This is a problem which _can't_ be solved by a central authority. That's like asking the police to go around making people be nice to each other: Yes, they can control the most blatant abuses (IRL: violence, theft, etc. -> Online: Cheating, DDosing, etc.), but they will never be able to - and should never have the right to - control for every possible sub-optimal communication. You yourself have the tools to do that (IRL: go away, call someone out, etc. -> online: Mute, Leave the game, etc.)

philipov 9y ago
I'm not sure whether you're agreeing with me or not, because, while I don't think it's possible to solve this problem using a central authority, it is a problem that affects a very large portion of the playerbase, so your dichotomy is false. It is not a problem that affects a "small subset of players"
- Joe-Z 9y ago
  No the "small subset of players" was referring to top players that would be affected by people misusing blocking other players. As for all the players "affected" by this problem: People should learn to chill out. In a virtual, anonymous setting, some people will use the opportunity to be mean to you. That's why muting and block was introduced. I don't get the big deal, even though a big number of people seem to be "affected". Actually, one of the wort statements in the whole article: "There’s no IRL and online anymore. This is just all reality now." WTF? That is the _point_ of creating virtual spaces or play per se. If I want a dose of reality I might as well watch the news and do some bookkeeping.
s73v3r_ 9y ago
And the games companies, the ones making the games, disagree. They believe that this toxic behavior is affecting more people than the alternative options are, and so they want to nip it in the bud.

jotm 9y ago

Yeah, I didn't think about that. I just played for fun, not competitiveness.

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago

I think a better solution (better than what currently exists) would entail centralizing gaming profiles which would require you to share profile data across games and game companies so bad behavior in one game is reported to all of your games.