Originally posted by XAPGames

/snip

One possible game mechanic that could assist would be an up / down ranking of a player's reputation (not just the character, but rather all characters on the account).  Have the up / down ranking weighted to the ranking player's own reputation so that their ranking of others is diminished (or even ignored) if they have poor reputation.  From there create a configuration option "auto ignore players with ranking below this threshold (with a numeric pulldown)".

/snip 

I expect this would just create another mechanic for some really horrible griefing.   At least in open world pvp you can fight back.   How do you fight back against a rep trashing griefing campaign?

Originally posted by jimdandy26
I honestly believe the answer is real ID. Blizzard was very much on the right track in my mind. The only real concession would be screen name versus real life name but only to have that outlet that many want. Lock everyone to a single account to use across the internet as a hole. People would cut down on the majority of bullshit if there were actual real consequences for their actions. Would it stop all of it, most certainly not (no system can) but just as in the real world the vast majority of it would disapear.

No, Real ID is not the answer.  Real ID is a serious breach of privacy and leaves you more suspectible to hackers and worse.  I don't need people with severe issues or psychological problems looking me up online when they get angry about something I did in game (which more often than not is an issue with them not me, as I try to play as nice as possible in game).  Because my first and last name is one a kind it's fairly easy to look up information on me if you have my full name, and that makes a hacker, sociopath, or unstable person with a grudge having that sort of information is not a good thing.  It's bad enough when you can get harassed in game by someone and eventually either get them banned or having a GM make them stop, but if they have enough information about you personally there is nothing stopping them from doing this is real life either.

Not to mention if they manage to take control of your account they could potentially tarnish your reputation in real life.  It's not impossible for a hacker to get a hold of your account through no fault of your own.  Blizzard who uses the real ID system for example.

There is a VERY simple solution to this however people will never agree to it...

You need to take the Anonymity out of it.  People would have to use ther real names (that they used for the credit card to be used in game.

This creates accountability... You are now personally and directly responsible for your own actions and this will create a natural civility. Now I don't mean you characters name is your real name but every character would have a searchable profile with the users REAL name in it.

Too many people hide behind the wall of anonymity and use this shroud as a means to be sociopathic and wreckless to anyone around them...

You wouldn't walk down the street calling people assholes and curse out their mothers because you would probably end up with a broken jaw or worse.

I would almost guarantee that gaming communities would magically become a much better place overnight if something like this was put in and enforced. 

I don't view it as broken.

MMO communities are working as intended.

You can join or create any guild with any standards of behavior that align with your own

You can ignore or report people who go beyond the games policy

Then again I have a thick skin. I dont run to the game police to solve my problems. If someone is being a dillhole to me i go and kill them in game. over, and over, and over, and over.

If its a game I cannot kill them in due to mechanics I put them on ignore and never have a second thought about them.

The more you try to shove politically correct horsepoop into everyones face, the more peopel will get sick of it and fight back by being the biggest d-bags they can be.

If you are so offended by people being assholes do something about the real life versions. Go picket the Westboro baptist church. Do something that has real life meaning. Stop trying to turn every video game community into a pre-k class where everyone has to share and play nice and hold hands or else its the time out naughty chair.

Provide more ways for the playerbase to segregate into smaller, like-minded communities. I know the whole politically correct thing is a utopian lovefest of tolerance and respect, but if we sit that treehugging crap aside and look at things realistically, the more a playerbase is allowed to divide itself into smaller groups of people with related wants/interests the less prevalant trolling, antagonism and conflict is.

League of Legends is a perfect example. There are few separate channels. Everyone of every background, playstyle, age, skill level, etc is all mashed into the same chat channels. Aside from the toxic influence of anonimity you also have a diverse array of all levels of tactless socially stunted morons who can't be educated on how to act in mixed company because for the past twenty years, everyone told them they special snowflakes... oh, and they have 'freedom of speach."  And if you want to make LoL look peachy keen, check out SMITE, where there's even less separation and in the level 1-6 range, it's hard to find a match where someone isn't spewing personal attacks because some new player didn't telepathically know to do what that dude was thinking is the optimal strategy.

Sex, politics and religion are three things you don't bring up in mixed company. The standard internet responses are:

• I shouldn't have to hide who I am or how I feel about things.
• If they can't handle it they can put me on ignore.

The tactless jackasses that feel those are acceptable answers are the problem, not the guy that simply reacted to the controversial, and probably not even game related, garbage that got brought up.

However, if a game offers places that groups can readily access as meeting places, custom chat channels, channels for different languages, etc then a lot of the problems are solved.

See, if the LGBT crowd is having a conversation about same sex marriage in local, they're going to get responses from those that might have a problem with it or those that might jsut want to troll the crap out of them. If they had a channel or physical location in game where they can meet and talk, much more civil discourse occurs. The same with religion, politics parenting, current events, war/military, etc. 

When it's one local/global pile-on, it's harder to enforce civility. However, if you have a [special interest] channel and or location, it's easier to punt offenders and enforce some level of civility because the antagonist has to make a point to join or travel to that channel or location.

For the past ten years, MMOs have become more of a massive heap of everything in one channel. It's IRC hell without a damn @op or bot in sight to clean it up. I honestly think most devs wouldn't even know where to begin to put social tools back into MMOs, let alone actually start doing it, especially whn they always have the 'you can put them on ignore' cop out readily at hand.

The way to create game communities from a game's playerbase, is to allow people to function like people and not some utopian ideal of the way people should act if Ghandi and John Lennon redesigned the universe.

Originally posted by Wighty

There is a VERY simple solution to this however people will never agree to it...

 

You need to take the Anonymity out of it.  People would have to use ther real names (that they used for the credit card to be used in game.

This creates accountability... You are now personally and directly responsible for your own actions and this will create a natural civility. Now I don't mean you characters name is your real name but every character would have a searchable profile with the users REAL name in it.

Too many people hide behind the wall of anonymity and use this shroud as a means to be sociopathic and wreckless to anyone around them...

You wouldn't walk down the street calling people assholes and curse out their mothers because you would probably end up with a broken jaw or worse.

I would almost guarantee that gaming communities would magically become a much better place overnight if something like this was put in and enforced. 

I already replied to a post above stating the problems of a Real ID system.  I think the notion that it would magically create a decent community is absolutely absurd, especially since it is used in Blizzard games and these games aren't exactly known for stellar communities (in fact quite the opposite).  You may not have a wall of anonymity, but probability also means that a person you are griefing likely won't ever deal with you in real life (much less recognize you) so you could still troll/grief/harass away, and having a person's real name gives TRUE sociopaths much more leverage to cause harassment or worse to you that could impact your real life due to the lack of anonymity.

Look at threats and harassment cases of certain celebrities, politicians, radio hosts, and bloggers.  A lack of anonymity opens you open to all kinds of harassment.  Also it's not as if I can't use make an account under the guise of someone elses name and harm their reputation.

I has much better in game experiences in games where there was forced grouping. If you were a dick in ff11 for example eventually you would find yourself without a group and when you did find a group it would be a bad one. Community exclusion of something desireable tends to bring out some decency in people.

In games where the skill is measured in terms of personal achievement and the majority of the game is spent 1v1ing I see the worst communities. Fighting games tend to have some of the worst communities.

Originally posted by bamdorf

Originally posted by XAPGames

/snip

One possible game mechanic that could assist would be an up / down ranking of a player's reputation (not just the character, but rather all characters on the account).  Have the up / down ranking weighted to the ranking player's own reputation so that their ranking of others is diminished (or even ignored) if they have poor reputation.  From there create a configuration option "auto ignore players with ranking below this threshold (with a numeric pulldown)".

/snip 

I expect this would just create another mechanic for some really horrible griefing.   At least in open world pvp you can fight back.   How do you fight back against a rep trashing griefing campaign?

Exactly. That's one of the reasons there's no 'dislike' on Facebook and why YouTube has been considering removing thumbs down.

Originally posted by Magnum2103

Originally posted by Wighty

There is a VERY simple solution to this however people will never agree to it...

 

You need to take the Anonymity out of it.  People would have to use ther real names (that they used for the credit card to be used in game.

This creates accountability... You are now personally and directly responsible for your own actions and this will create a natural civility. Now I don't mean you characters name is your real name but every character would have a searchable profile with the users REAL name in it.

Too many people hide behind the wall of anonymity and use this shroud as a means to be sociopathic and wreckless to anyone around them...

You wouldn't walk down the street calling people assholes and curse out their mothers because you would probably end up with a broken jaw or worse.

I would almost guarantee that gaming communities would magically become a much better place overnight if something like this was put in and enforced. 

I already replied to a post above stating the problems of a Real ID system.  I think the notion that it would magically create a decent community is absolutely absurd, especially since it is used in Blizzard games and these games aren't exactly known for stellar communities (in fact quite the opposite).  You may not have a wall of anonymity, but probability also means that a person you are griefing likely won't ever deal with you in real life (much less recognize you) so you could still troll/grief/harass away, and having a person's real name gives TRUE sociopaths much more leverage to cause harassment or worse to you that could impact your real life due to the lack of anonymity.

Look at threats and harassment cases of certain celebrities, politicians, radio hosts, and bloggers.  A lack of anonymity opens you open to all kinds of harassment.  Also it's not as if I can't use make an account under the guise of someone elses name and harm their reputation.

Blizzards system is optional or only used with friends... not really sure of the specifics.

Currently there is no consequence, no accountability. Perhaps it was naieve of me to state magically change... there is still cyberbullying in Facebook and other social platforms where real names are involved... why not in gaming though...

The only other solution? Bans like LoL, force the community to be civil by investigating and banning people that have enough "red flags" against them.

Community tribunal...

As a complete side note develops that create games with consrquence like Age of Wushu (characters Jailed, bounty, etc) are far more civil for an open PvP game that say Darkfall where the community is just plain vile elitists.

Originally posted by Magnum2103

Originally posted by jimdandy26
I honestly believe the answer is real ID. Blizzard was very much on the right track in my mind. The only real concession would be screen name versus real life name but only to have that outlet that many want. Lock everyone to a single account to use across the internet as a hole. People would cut down on the majority of bullshit if there were actual real consequences for their actions. Would it stop all of it, most certainly not (no system can) but just as in the real world the vast majority of it would disapear.

No, Real ID is not the answer.  Real ID is a serious breach of privacy and leaves you more suspectible to hackers and worse.  I don't need people with severe issues or psychological problems looking me up online when they get angry about something I did in game (which more often than not is an issue with them not me, as I try to play as nice as possible in game).  Because my first and last name is one a kind it's fairly easy to look up information on me if you have my full name, and that makes a hacker, sociopath, or unstable person with a grudge having that sort of information is not a good thing.  It's bad enough when you can get harassed in game by someone and eventually either get them banned or having a GM make them stop, but if they have enough information about you personally there is nothing stopping them from doing this is real life either.

Not to mention if they manage to take control of your account they could potentially tarnish your reputation in real life.  It's not impossible for a hacker to get a hold of your account through no fault of your own.  Blizzard who uses the real ID system for example.

That is a piss poor argument honestly. Not much different from the ones that people were using to get DnD banned in the 80's because some kids decided to larp with real weapons and got hurt, or the ones that went "real metal" and started worshiping Satan and the like using it as a surrogate.

Originally posted by Magnum2103

I already replied to a post above stating the problems of a Real ID system.  I think the notion that it would magically create a decent community is absolutely absurd, especially since it is used in Blizzard games and these games aren't exactly known for stellar communities (in fact quite the opposite).  You may not have a wall of anonymity, but probability also means that a person you are griefing likely won't ever deal with you in real life (much less recognize you) so you could still troll/grief/harass away, and having a person's real name gives TRUE sociopaths much more leverage to cause harassment or worse to you that could impact your real life due to the lack of anonymity.

Look at threats and harassment cases of certain celebrities, politicians, radio hosts, and bloggers.  A lack of anonymity opens you open to all kinds of harassment.  Also it's not as if I can't use make an account under the guise of someone elses name and harm their reputation.

You missed what I am saying. You cannot do this on a single game, or even company, level and expect it to succeed. Especially when the system that has been put in place by Blizzard is nowhere near as enforced as it should be. The internet in general needs an effective set of laws put in place to curtail the pure anarchy that currently exists. The human race in general does not have the collective maturity to deal with real freedom. Personal accountability is the only answer that has been found throughout our entire history to combat the problem that currently exists.

Originally posted by Wighty

Blizzards system is optional or only used with friends... not really sure of the specifics.

Currently there is no consequence, no accountability. Perhaps it was naieve of me to state magically change... there is still cyberbullying in Facebook and other social platforms where real names are involved... why not in gaming though...

 

The only other solution? Bans like LoL, force the community to be civil by investigating and banning people that have enough "red flags" against them.

Community tribunal...

 

As a complete side note develops that create games with consrquence like Age of Wushu (characters Jailed, bounty, etc) are far more civil for an open PvP game that say Darkfall where the community is just plain vile elitists.

 

I agree on the accountability part, but people don't need to see who you are.  It just needs to be set up so that your actions can be held liable towards you. 

I also liked the idea of allowing people to group themselves better, but I find that the type of people that group themselves are not the problem.   It is the people that don't seek to be in groups are usually the ones that don't respect others.    

Originally posted by LadyEuphei

 

How do you think we can fix the gaming community?

Everyone being nice to each other is the simpilist solution

Originally posted by LadyEuphei

Originally posted by Vunak23

This community is damaged internally and bleeding from every orifice. You would need nothing short of a miracle to turn the gaming/internet community into something that could even be considered civil. 

Anonymity will always bring out the worst in people because nobody cares enough when it takes a few minutes to create a new user account.

 

Well yes, I understand that. The point is that we have heard the negative. I am looking for a solution. What can we as a community come up with to fix this problem. I am think some kind of a anti-a**-hat community or maybe a gamer approved community or something where if you are a a** hat you get reported and taken off the list or something. I do not know guys that is why I though together we could come up with something great!

What it would take is a common consensus to suddenly sweep the users of sites like this, something that will never happen. The only alternative would be people realizing opinion isn't fact, it will differ from person to person, in turn people would learn to respect another's opinion. Something else I do not see happening.

The only way to stop irrational behavior is to educate people freely.  Any attempt to force it to be "good" is a sure sign of nanny state obsession.

Role models, technologies, videos, stories, all help reduce unwanted behavior.

Some games are literally designed in such a way that it is asking for all the idiocy and it makes me want to punch the developers of such games.

Trying to segregate people into different play groups seems like a good idea...

However when was the last time you were on an RP game server... Global chat is still nothing more than a glorified 4chan chatroom... The developers have no interest in enforcing this, and it almost seems as if some people join RP servers just to douche it up a bit...

Using real information is the only way... I mean all your information is already out there, on Facebook, twitter, linkedin. and whatever else social media there is... why should this be any different unless you are the one that is trying to hide?

I also think games, free or otherwise should require a credit card to sign up and only useable for one account... this not only establishes age (or at least a consenting adult) but prevents players from creating dozens of accounts.

Originally posted by Plasmicredx

The only way to stop irrational behavior is to educate people freely.  Any attempt to force it to be "good" is a sure sign of nanny state obsession.

 

Role models, technologies, videos, stories, all help reduce unwanted behavior.

 

Some games are literally designed in such a way that it is asking for all the idiocy and it makes me want to punch the developers of such games.

Man i want what this guy is smoking...

In truth I to some degree think a lot of gamers are pretty educated... critical thinkers, problem solvers etc. They is just no accountability when people can freely hide behind their monitor and keyboard.

Originally posted by LadyEuphei

So, there has been a large amount of talk about the gaming community being toxic. It is fine and well to dwell in the negative, but how can we fix it? We are all smart people here, so lets put our brains together and maybe we can accomplish something. What do you think we can do?

Example 1:

I know as a female gamer I have seen several "support" groups/communities for female gamers open up over the years. They emphasize girl gamers being normal players and deserve the same respect of any male gamer. Do you think a anti-being-an-a-hat community would work to fix our problem? 

Example 2:

League of legends has started banning pro gamers that are toxic to show that they will not take it and that it is not ok on any level of skill. They have also implemented the honor system to try and make people think about the positive and not only the negative (reporting). I personally think it has worked wonders on the community and given it a fighting chance at maybe recovering from its a-hat infection.

We get blamed for alot of violence and problems. Maybe it is true since our community is so mean, racist, sexist, and generally evil (except for a few) If we were to try to activally pursue change and growth of our community out of being 4-6 year olds into being 21/25+ people maybe we could lose a bit of the media heat that we get. So, think. Think hard and lets come together and figure out how we can make a better community!

tl;dr

How do you think we can fix the gaming community?

You can not fix gaming communities. Once they have become known for how they are or how they act, they pretty much have buried themselves. I won't post any that have, but we all know which have.

Honestly, your age bracket are still "kids" in my eyes. Most are just out for fun and barely know what "responsibility is or how to properly act. (I speak for those in the games I have played, not everyone).

If a community wants to be liked, act like a human. Don't continue with the Chuck Norris jokes, or be-little people because you think you are so great (which in most cases you are not). The Communites that thrive act like "adults" wether or not you are one. Kid things can go right back to that one game they deserve to be in (another one I do not need to name). :)