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Xbox One's Reputation feature targets trolls and griefers

Bad behaviour from strangers during online games has always been a problem, but Microsoft is taking steps to address it with a more robust reputation system for Xbox One, which will be similar to Gamerscore but based on how nice you are.

"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," senior product manager Mike Lavin has told OXM. "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."

Gamers with low reputations will find themselves paired up with players of a similar reputation, ensuring that trolls and griefers only get to spoil each other's games, leaving everyone else to have a nice time. It sounds similar to what Rockstar did with Max Payne 3's multiplayer, which also weeded out troublemakers by matching like with like.

"Reputation is just like Achievements - you want your Reputation score as high as you can get it," Lavin explained. "There may even be opportunities where if you participate in some of our community programmes, your reputation can even get higher."

Xbox One launches later this year. But you probably already knew that.

Published: 04/07/2013

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