Xbox One Will Defend Your Mum’s Honour – Microsoft Outline New Reputation System

Microsoft have promised “no more cheats or jerks” on Xbox Live with the announcement of a new reputation system coming with Xbox One.

Xbox Live’s program manager Michael Dunn wrote on the company’s website to outline a streamlined way to avoid the many awful people who dwell on Xbox Live and say hurtful things about your mum.

“So, how are we doing this?” said Dunn. Good question. “We are simplifying the mechanism for Xbox One – moving from a survey option to more direct feedback, including things like “block” or “mute player” actions into the feedback model.

“The new model will take all of the feedback from a player’s online flow, put it in the system with a crazy algorithm we created and validated with an MSR PhD to make sure things are fair for everyone.

Player feedback will reflect on the player with a simple colour rating: Green = Good Player, Yellow = Needs Improvement and Red = Avoid Me”, which the badge of honour or dishonour able to change over time.

“The algorithm is sophisticated and won’t penalise you for a few bad reports. Even good players might receive a few player feedback reports each month and that is OK,” said Dunn, laying to rest some concerns people may have.

“The algorithm weighs the data collected so if a dozen people suddenly reporting a single user, the system will look at a variety of factors before docking their reputation. We’ll verify if those people actually played in an online game with the person reported – if not, all of those player’s feedback won’t matter as much as a single person who spent 15 minutes playing with the reported person. The system also looks at the reputation of the person reporting and the alleged offender, frequency of reports from a single user and a number of other factors.”

Dunn and his team will continue to adapt the system as it is integrated across the online platform in the hope of better refining the algorithm and better punishing those worst offenders.