4 ms·

I don’t understand how this is controversial. If you’ve ever played a competitive game then you’ve almost certainly encountered an abusive player. I don’t jus

I don’t understand how this is controversial. If you’ve ever played a competitive game then you’ve almost certainly encountered an abusive player. I don’t just mean verbally abusive, I mean the player who quits the game, AFKs, or intentionally feeds the enemy team when they don’t get the role they want. Maybe you’ve encountered the player who dodges the match the moment their favorite character is selected. Typically even if the game ended the moment they left, or if there was a vote kick/remake mechanism. You will have lost at least 2-3 minutes of your time, if not the length of an entire match. As a child, maybe this is acceptable, you can just move on to the next match. As an adult who can only set aside enough time for one or two matches it’s devastating. It’s the type of behavior that you the good behaving, rule respecting, team player gets penalized for. When there is no restriction on just creating new accounts, these negative types of players just create a new account after they get banned or penalized and continue being negative players. Increasingly these new accounts are being sold for $0.50 to $3.00, pre made with the tutorial missions completed, so that these negative players can spend a tiny amount of money and jump right into ruining another persons night. I hope all multiplayer games start to add in this type of requirement. Bad behavior should be punished in an enforceable way.

q-big 4y ago
> It’s the type of behavior that you the good behaving, rule respecting, team player gets penalized for. This rather sounds like badly designed scoring rules.
BoorishBears 4y ago
I'm mildly annoyed by it because it really doesn't work. Something you might not realize is in games that require phone numbers > Increasingly these new accounts are being sold for $0.50 to $3.00, This is still true: https://www.playerauctions.com/cod-account/warzone/ https://www.playerauctions.com/cod-account/warzone/ Unfortunately the best deterrent OW 1 has was being paid.
- voidwtf 4y ago
  I’ll respond to this, but I’m also replying to another that noted how cheap phone numbers are. In the beginning, yes, they appear to be cheap. But that doesn’t last very long in my prior experience, the last multiplayer platform I used that used phone number verification blocked several VoIP carriers shortly after they started abusing the ease of getting numbers. This was super effective, overnight games got significantly better. Rinse and repeat, adding region locking of phone region to server region, etc… I know it’s not perfect, but you can’t forgo good for a lack of perfect. Every hoop removes a non-trivial amount of bad actors. I’d rather have one game a week be annoying, then 3 dodges and 1 disconnect nearly every attempt at playing.
  - dbttdft 4y ago
    1. It's supposed to be easy go get new phone numbers. This is required for things like privacy, bypassing block lists that you got on for reasons out of your control, getting a new number that doesn't receive 1000 spam messages per day, etc. Basic stuff any engineer knows about. 2. Some carriers (1 in 50) require a photo ID to sign up, which is ass backwards. They even have brainwashed employees that answer "maybe something happened", when you ask "WTF? Why do you need photo ID now?". The idea that a phone number is a thing conveying some sense of liability and responsibility, is asinine. 3. Whatever problem you are experiencing is over represented. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33038531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33038531 . Yes, people disconnect, shit happens. Get over it. You are literally asking the world to become more police state so "you can enjoy your video game". 4. Your "there is no alternative" bullshit has been covered by other posters in this thread. Let's actually break down this dodge and disconnect thing a bit more: There are only two situations: 1. You're in a complete noob or unranked match. You already will get useless teammates that don't know how to play the game anyway. In fact, I'm now suspicious that everyone in this thread are this extremely bigoted player I play with sometimes in an unranked game, who gets angry at every noob when we lose with that noob on our team, or quitter, or whatever he can blame things on. Calling out dodgers is highly suspicious that you're one of those people. 2. You're in a ranked match. By definition, there are less "bad actors" here, as they would have been banned and have to work to get back to this rank. This is a straightforward problem to solve and if your company is so bad at it that every match somehow has this problem (which itself is against odds even without moderation), then they're not doing their job. Of course they could always add whatever gimmick you want to appease you instead of solving the problem (moderating better).
sanjayio 4y ago
I couldn't agree more. It'll filter out the cheaters, abusive players, and early leavers. In terms of privacy, asking for a phone number is peanuts compared to the level of access Vanguard has on your computer. I think people are blowing this out of proportion.
- dbttdft 4y ago
  > level of access Vanguard has on your computer I use a separate computer for games. Multiple for different games. Just because they have egregious amount of access to stuff like the hardware profile and the ability to run anything with full privileges doesn't mean I want to also have phone number nonsense on top of that.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  I encounter all of those behaviors on games like CS:GO that already require phone verification. Can't wait to get SWATed by a tank who thought I was a bad healer when the db leaks.
- motbus3 4y ago
  I guess I'm too old for that. So don't take my pov too seriously. Competitive gaming takes away all the fun. I think the stress and frustration do not compensate the wins. You play to relax but gets stress 90% of the time You dedicate an absurd of time to it like in a sport, but it has no benefits to health. You have a limited amount of time in your day to experience different things but then you get dragged to the same 3 button mashing over and over. Obviously, it is not for me. So, again, don't take it seriously. Maybe someone can answer and give some good counter points that may convince me that it is worth it.
dbttdft 4y ago
> I don’t understand how this is controversial. First and foremost: Because it's a gimmick on top of being annoying. Second and very important: Because phone numbers do not actually fix anything. People will pool numbers, people will buy new numbers ($1). But since you already got baited on the hook, you will all happily accept photo ID as the next "fix" as well as whatever comes after that. Because I've literally watched gamers complain about practically the same shit since the year 2000 and layers of new snake oil were added by the corporations to appease you, and you still complain since these gimmicks predictably amount to nothing aside from making it more annoying to play the game. Because not everyone has a phone. Because kids don't have phones (yeah I know this is changing). Because phone is not the internet. Because phones suck. Because phone numbers change. Because I don't want more stuff tied to my phone (which I don't have) that needs to change when my number changes. Because it's another way for your game to break. Phone might not work at the time or the message wont be received or your phone is crashing/updating as usual and that adds another 5 minute delay before you can start the game, or you forgot to charge the phone. Which brings up the same point: because phones suck, why the hell do I need to hold a separate physical device to use what is essentially a different email account which is on an entirely different network and both networks have to be up all the time to be able to do anything? The above point is extremely pertinent. About every 19 in 20 games I have played since the year 2000 have had some obtuse login, onboarding, social, whatever the hell bogus system with all kinds of dangling third parties and if any one of them broke or you clicked the wrong button you'd have to spend possibly an hour just making the game start up. Perhaps with one of the most successful games ever made this may not be an issue, but for the rest of the games, this certainly is. Because I don't want gamedevs to have my phone number (nor the hassle of setting up a throwaway). Because of all the reasons I hate email verification (which is utterly pointless aside from helping grannies not lose their account, since this is what captcha is for) as well. Because the company will fuck up every possible thing imaginable so the phone will have some huge downside I didn't think of yet. > I hope all multiplayer games start to add in this type of requirement No. Kindly keep that, far away from anything I use, pretty please. Thank you. I will never add it to my games, either.
- thegayretard69 4y ago
  I would already accept photo ID for ranked ladders. It's basically real money on the line these days.
Gamemaster1379 4y ago
By far the biggest issue isn't just toxic accounts, but "smurf" accounts. Alternative accounts where players don't want to risk their incredibly high rank so they play on an account they "don't care about". You end up. With top 1% players playing at the median bell curve with average players. You then end up with one player who can solo an entire enemy team of 6, dominating the game; OR being incredibly toxic to his team for not meeting his expectations and throwing the game. It takes 1 player per match to ruin it for everyone else. In Overwatch, if 10% of accounts were smurfs, you statistically would have at least one in around half your games. Players eventually can't progress and make progress to get better because the top 1% of players at 4500 SR gatekeep 2800 SR and above.
f1refly 4y ago
I don't understand why you'd think requiring a phone number would fix any of this. The incentives are still against you. I still play games occasionally and I deeply understand the frustration when the two hours you can afford to play in a week are utterly ruined intentionally by a thirteen year old child not getting his way. Your misjudgement is that the game company would eventually ban those accounts or at least only let you play against nice players after you've accumulated enough trust. Riot, for example, once said that they have all the data to only match the horrible, toxic people against each other and let everyone else have a great time, but they will never implement it in their system. All of those toxic players have a massive amount of value to them because of the money they spent, pooling them against each other would tank engagement and thus sales. So while you might be disincentived to play their game because of your past experiences, you're worth less to the company than the 10% ruining every other game for you. In my opinion valve fixed this problem a lot better with their counter strike lobby system. In that game, you can mark yourself "searching" like in other competitve games, but you have the option to not be thrown into a round directly but to have other players invite you to their team. You can then check their profiles and chat with them a bit to see what kind of people they are. Games that where ruined by my own team have become so rare that they can neglected when planning my evening, which has become the most important reason for me to start counter strike instead of other competitive games. There might be other options to improve the average match experience that I'm not aware of, but essentially outsourcing the player base moderation to the players in question seems like the best option I've encountered yet.
dbttdft 4y ago
> nonsense that ignores reality which no one who calls themselves a hacker (old school definition) would agree with is still top upvoted I played Fortnite for 2 years at the start. Reddit posts with 50000 upvotes were complaining about "the cheaters", while posts about actual problems (weapon switch lag, bug where you edit a wall but it edits the wrong one, etc) were unacknowledged. The company even acknowledged the "cheating problem" (as any bad company would, regardless of if it's real). However, in my thousands of games, I've come across maybe 2 cheaters. What I did notice, is almost every random I play with complained about: - shooting around corners - flick aim - stuff that cheats dont even typically do, like allowing you to bypass a highly specefic cooldown which would only benefit a highly experienced player who would beat said randoms even without cheats And then we get all those big incompetent hardware review sites who can't even explain how vsync works writing articles about how there are so many cheaters in game 1 2 and 3. Again, I have played competitive FPS for 20 years. When I'm in a game playing with randoms and it happens to be the 1/300 where a cheater ruins it, I noticed consistently what is unsurprising: my team mates act like this is the end of the world, want to shoot the cheater IRL, etc. This is because the average video game player is a bad sport and is always seeking for something to blame his losses on. Most people do not play video games for sportsmanship, but to consume a product. Do you see the problem now? No matter what measures are added, you will still complain. I argued with the exact same hordes of entitled bigoted kids each time something like VAC or Punkbuster came out. The before and after situation of perceived cheating was absolutely no different. I do not believe for one second that 50 of you ITT are competent gamers and can discern cheating. Less than 10% of gamers can. If you're "an adult with other things to do", you most certainly can't. So why do you really want phone identification, after knowing all of this? Answer that and stay fashionable.
- noahtallen 4y ago
  But cheating is just one aspect of the problem. Another very common thing to do is Smurf, where you get an alt account and end up playing in low-level matches again and easily win. Shouldn’t it be possible to prevent these players from coming back? Or how about that person who wants to shoot their opponent IRL just because they’re a bad sport? Shouldn’t it be possible to report them and get them banned permanently? When a game is free to play like OW2, all of these things which are already huge problems for the OW1 player base become even worse because there’s no cost barrier to entry. SMS seems like the least intrusive way to identify the same person across different accounts.

q-big 4y ago

> It’s the type of behavior that you the good behaving, rule respecting, team player gets penalized for. This rather sounds like badly designed scoring rules.

BoorishBears 4y ago

I'm mildly annoyed by it because it really doesn't work. Something you might not realize is in games that require phone numbers > Increasingly these new accounts are being sold for $0.50 to $3.00, This is still true: https://www.playerauctions.com/cod-account/warzone/ https://www.playerauctions.com/cod-account/warzone/ Unfortunately the best deterrent OW 1 has was being paid.

voidwtf 4y ago
I’ll respond to this, but I’m also replying to another that noted how cheap phone numbers are. In the beginning, yes, they appear to be cheap. But that doesn’t last very long in my prior experience, the last multiplayer platform I used that used phone number verification blocked several VoIP carriers shortly after they started abusing the ease of getting numbers. This was super effective, overnight games got significantly better. Rinse and repeat, adding region locking of phone region to server region, etc… I know it’s not perfect, but you can’t forgo good for a lack of perfect. Every hoop removes a non-trivial amount of bad actors. I’d rather have one game a week be annoying, then 3 dodges and 1 disconnect nearly every attempt at playing.
- dbttdft 4y ago
  1. It's supposed to be easy go get new phone numbers. This is required for things like privacy, bypassing block lists that you got on for reasons out of your control, getting a new number that doesn't receive 1000 spam messages per day, etc. Basic stuff any engineer knows about. 2. Some carriers (1 in 50) require a photo ID to sign up, which is ass backwards. They even have brainwashed employees that answer "maybe something happened", when you ask "WTF? Why do you need photo ID now?". The idea that a phone number is a thing conveying some sense of liability and responsibility, is asinine. 3. Whatever problem you are experiencing is over represented. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33038531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33038531 . Yes, people disconnect, shit happens. Get over it. You are literally asking the world to become more police state so "you can enjoy your video game". 4. Your "there is no alternative" bullshit has been covered by other posters in this thread. Let's actually break down this dodge and disconnect thing a bit more: There are only two situations: 1. You're in a complete noob or unranked match. You already will get useless teammates that don't know how to play the game anyway. In fact, I'm now suspicious that everyone in this thread are this extremely bigoted player I play with sometimes in an unranked game, who gets angry at every noob when we lose with that noob on our team, or quitter, or whatever he can blame things on. Calling out dodgers is highly suspicious that you're one of those people. 2. You're in a ranked match. By definition, there are less "bad actors" here, as they would have been banned and have to work to get back to this rank. This is a straightforward problem to solve and if your company is so bad at it that every match somehow has this problem (which itself is against odds even without moderation), then they're not doing their job. Of course they could always add whatever gimmick you want to appease you instead of solving the problem (moderating better).

sanjayio 4y ago

I couldn't agree more. It'll filter out the cheaters, abusive players, and early leavers. In terms of privacy, asking for a phone number is peanuts compared to the level of access Vanguard has on your computer. I think people are blowing this out of proportion.

dbttdft 4y ago
> level of access Vanguard has on your computer I use a separate computer for games. Multiple for different games. Just because they have egregious amount of access to stuff like the hardware profile and the ability to run anything with full privileges doesn't mean I want to also have phone number nonsense on top of that.
Rebelgecko 4y ago
I encounter all of those behaviors on games like CS:GO that already require phone verification. Can't wait to get SWATed by a tank who thought I was a bad healer when the db leaks.
motbus3 4y ago
I guess I'm too old for that. So don't take my pov too seriously. Competitive gaming takes away all the fun. I think the stress and frustration do not compensate the wins. You play to relax but gets stress 90% of the time You dedicate an absurd of time to it like in a sport, but it has no benefits to health. You have a limited amount of time in your day to experience different things but then you get dragged to the same 3 button mashing over and over. Obviously, it is not for me. So, again, don't take it seriously. Maybe someone can answer and give some good counter points that may convince me that it is worth it.

dbttdft 4y ago

> I don’t understand how this is controversial. First and foremost: Because it's a gimmick on top of being annoying. Second and very important: Because phone numbers do not actually fix anything. People will pool numbers, people will buy new numbers ($1). But since you already got baited on the hook, you will all happily accept photo ID as the next "fix" as well as whatever comes after that. Because I've literally watched gamers complain about practically the same shit since the year 2000 and layers of new snake oil were added by the corporations to appease you, and you still complain since these gimmicks predictably amount to nothing aside from making it more annoying to play the game. Because not everyone has a phone. Because kids don't have phones (yeah I know this is changing). Because phone is not the internet. Because phones suck. Because phone numbers change. Because I don't want more stuff tied to my phone (which I don't have) that needs to change when my number changes. Because it's another way for your game to break. Phone might not work at the time or the message wont be received or your phone is crashing/updating as usual and that adds another 5 minute delay before you can start the game, or you forgot to charge the phone. Which brings up the same point: because phones suck, why the hell do I need to hold a separate physical device to use what is essentially a different email account which is on an entirely different network and both networks have to be up all the time to be able to do anything? The above point is extremely pertinent. About every 19 in 20 games I have played since the year 2000 have had some obtuse login, onboarding, social, whatever the hell bogus system with all kinds of dangling third parties and if any one of them broke or you clicked the wrong button you'd have to spend possibly an hour just making the game start up. Perhaps with one of the most successful games ever made this may not be an issue, but for the rest of the games, this certainly is. Because I don't want gamedevs to have my phone number (nor the hassle of setting up a throwaway). Because of all the reasons I hate email verification (which is utterly pointless aside from helping grannies not lose their account, since this is what captcha is for) as well. Because the company will fuck up every possible thing imaginable so the phone will have some huge downside I didn't think of yet. > I hope all multiplayer games start to add in this type of requirement No. Kindly keep that, far away from anything I use, pretty please. Thank you. I will never add it to my games, either.

thegayretard69 4y ago
I would already accept photo ID for ranked ladders. It's basically real money on the line these days.

Gamemaster1379 4y ago

By far the biggest issue isn't just toxic accounts, but "smurf" accounts. Alternative accounts where players don't want to risk their incredibly high rank so they play on an account they "don't care about". You end up. With top 1% players playing at the median bell curve with average players. You then end up with one player who can solo an entire enemy team of 6, dominating the game; OR being incredibly toxic to his team for not meeting his expectations and throwing the game. It takes 1 player per match to ruin it for everyone else. In Overwatch, if 10% of accounts were smurfs, you statistically would have at least one in around half your games. Players eventually can't progress and make progress to get better because the top 1% of players at 4500 SR gatekeep 2800 SR and above.

f1refly 4y ago

I don't understand why you'd think requiring a phone number would fix any of this. The incentives are still against you. I still play games occasionally and I deeply understand the frustration when the two hours you can afford to play in a week are utterly ruined intentionally by a thirteen year old child not getting his way. Your misjudgement is that the game company would eventually ban those accounts or at least only let you play against nice players after you've accumulated enough trust. Riot, for example, once said that they have all the data to only match the horrible, toxic people against each other and let everyone else have a great time, but they will never implement it in their system. All of those toxic players have a massive amount of value to them because of the money they spent, pooling them against each other would tank engagement and thus sales. So while you might be disincentived to play their game because of your past experiences, you're worth less to the company than the 10% ruining every other game for you. In my opinion valve fixed this problem a lot better with their counter strike lobby system. In that game, you can mark yourself "searching" like in other competitve games, but you have the option to not be thrown into a round directly but to have other players invite you to their team. You can then check their profiles and chat with them a bit to see what kind of people they are. Games that where ruined by my own team have become so rare that they can neglected when planning my evening, which has become the most important reason for me to start counter strike instead of other competitive games. There might be other options to improve the average match experience that I'm not aware of, but essentially outsourcing the player base moderation to the players in question seems like the best option I've encountered yet.

dbttdft 4y ago

> nonsense that ignores reality which no one who calls themselves a hacker (old school definition) would agree with is still top upvoted I played Fortnite for 2 years at the start. Reddit posts with 50000 upvotes were complaining about "the cheaters", while posts about actual problems (weapon switch lag, bug where you edit a wall but it edits the wrong one, etc) were unacknowledged. The company even acknowledged the "cheating problem" (as any bad company would, regardless of if it's real). However, in my thousands of games, I've come across maybe 2 cheaters. What I did notice, is almost every random I play with complained about: - shooting around corners - flick aim - stuff that cheats dont even typically do, like allowing you to bypass a highly specefic cooldown which would only benefit a highly experienced player who would beat said randoms even without cheats And then we get all those big incompetent hardware review sites who can't even explain how vsync works writing articles about how there are so many cheaters in game 1 2 and 3. Again, I have played competitive FPS for 20 years. When I'm in a game playing with randoms and it happens to be the 1/300 where a cheater ruins it, I noticed consistently what is unsurprising: my team mates act like this is the end of the world, want to shoot the cheater IRL, etc. This is because the average video game player is a bad sport and is always seeking for something to blame his losses on. Most people do not play video games for sportsmanship, but to consume a product. Do you see the problem now? No matter what measures are added, you will still complain. I argued with the exact same hordes of entitled bigoted kids each time something like VAC or Punkbuster came out. The before and after situation of perceived cheating was absolutely no different. I do not believe for one second that 50 of you ITT are competent gamers and can discern cheating. Less than 10% of gamers can. If you're "an adult with other things to do", you most certainly can't. So why do you really want phone identification, after knowing all of this? Answer that and stay fashionable.

noahtallen 4y ago
But cheating is just one aspect of the problem. Another very common thing to do is Smurf, where you get an alt account and end up playing in low-level matches again and easily win. Shouldn’t it be possible to prevent these players from coming back? Or how about that person who wants to shoot their opponent IRL just because they’re a bad sport? Shouldn’t it be possible to report them and get them banned permanently? When a game is free to play like OW2, all of these things which are already huge problems for the OW1 player base become even worse because there’s no cost barrier to entry. SMS seems like the least intrusive way to identify the same person across different accounts.