Microsoft senior product manager Mike Lavin has told Official Xbox Magazine how the Xbox One's revamped reputation system will work saying "You'll start to see some effects if you continue to play bad."
Trolls and griefers can be identified by a system which will be "just as viable" as a player's gamerscore Lavin explained. The system has been designed to allow people to play online in a hassle-free environment with needing to go to the bother of identifying and muting certain players who cause problems.
"You need a community of folks that aren't screaming vulgarities every ten seconds, or the griefers or the harassers," Lavin commented.
"If people are in your friends list, we're not touching that, we're just making it easier for you to come together. It's really the anonymous side of things where we're making these investments. Ultimately if there's a few per cent of our population that are causing the rest of the population to have a miserable time, we should be able to identify those folks."
If you continually insult and harass other players eventually you'll find yourself being paird up with gamers of a similar reputation who will be separated from better behaved players.
"If we see consistently that people, for instance, don't like playing with you, that you're consistently blocked, that you're the subject of enforcement actions because you're sending naked pictures of yourself to people that don't want naked pictures of you… Blatant things like that have the ability to quickly reduce your Reputation score.
"You'll start to see some effects if you continue to play bad or harass other people en masse. You'll probably end up starting to play more with other people that are more similar to you."
On the other hand, if you behave and play nice with the Xbox One community you'll be rewarded though quite what these rewards might be isn't presently clear.
"Reputation is just like Achievements – you want your Reputation score as high as you can get it," Lavin says. "There may even be opportunities where if you participate in some of our community programmes, your reputation can even get higher."
Microsoft is still working out the details of the system and how other players can come to learn of your reputation but efforts to make Xbox Live a more enjoyable experience for everyone should be applauded.
Some have expressed concern that due to the fact the Xbox One does not include a headset in the box the volume of abusive language and profanities over the Kinect sensor may be problematic.
If you're not quite clear on just how bad the current online gaming environment can be, you might want to check out this recent blog post about Mass Effect 3's multiplayer.
