After revealing a new Reputation System for Xbox Live on the Xbox One, Microsoft has finally revealed just how it will work.

Program manager on Xbox Live Micheal Dunn stated that, “By looking at someone’s Gamercard you’re able to quickly see their reputation. The more hours you play fairly online without being reported as abusive by other players, the better your reputation will be.

“The algorithm looks to identify players that are repeatedly disruptive across the community on Xbox Live. The vast majority of players do not regularly receive feedback from other players and, thus, will stay at the “Good Player” reputation level.

Player Reputation is divided into three levels: Green for “Good Player”, Yellow for “Needs Work” and Red for “Avoid Me”. As of now, most gamers fall into the Green zone and Microsoft will be rewarding said players for good behaviour. Those who are in the Yellow will receive warnings about their Reputation based on community reports and is based on feedback that’s been available since day one of the Xbox One’s release.

But don’t worry – other players can’t just file fake reports out of spite to lower your Reputation level. Microsoft’s system can weed out false reports and isn’t made to punish you within a few weeks of playing. Those with Yellow Reputation levels will begin receiving warnings this month regarding the same.

As for Red Reputation levels, you’ll see reduced match-makings and the revoking of certain features such as Twitch broadcasting if you fail to listen to warnings and just outright continue being a jerk.

Microsoft has outlined its entire policy and enforcement here, so you can check it out to learn about the team that will be monitoring Reputations, the values they hope to instill and a Code of Conduct for players to follow. What are your thoughts on the Reputation system thus far and will it yield positive results? Let us know in the comments.

This is funny because just about every site in existence that uses such a system sees the same problem – that is, users finding ways to gang up on others and just outright burying them.

Take Reddit for instance. You can upvote stories, which allow them to make their way to the front page. You can also upvote comments and these will float to the top of the page allowing users to see them first under every story. Until a while ago, user scores were visible for all and sundry. But Reddit later introduced a system where user scores could be hidden. Why?

"Give users any measure of freedom to decide what they do and don’t want to see, and you’ll be surprised by the results."

Because users tended to upvote comments with the highest number of points, and conversely, comments that were downvoted would be further plunged into oblivion. This is an example of the mob mentality – but then again, give users any measure of freedom to decide what they do and don’t want to see, and you’ll be surprised by the results.

Does it happen enough on Reddit to be a major problem? Not quite and there are enough mods coming up ways to circumvent the issues. But every once in a while, you will see posts of people who have left the site and never returned for reasons unknown.

Maybe real life got in the way or something else happened. One of the major practices is to create a throwaway account, because you don’t want to be carrying around things for the rest of your time on Reddit, much less give people a way to find you. While you may not find something similar on Xbox Live, it’s a testament to the fact that the mob can get to you online, one way or the other, no matter what you try to do. And unlike on Live, there are no throwaway accounts to hide behind.

"We’ll wait and see how the new Reputation System plays out before cruelly condemning it and then forcing Microsoft to change it."

Are most of the users on Live anything like that? If you count the fact that most people’s testimonies seem to come from dealing with children, then probably not. And the last time we tried to criticize Microsoft on doing something that was forward thinking – never mind how badly they bungled their message and delivery of it – was it reversed its DRM policies on the Xbox One. We had the freedom to play used games and never log in online, but features such as digital game sharing via the Family Policy were lost.

So we’ll wait and see how the new Reputation System plays out before cruelly condemning it and then forcing Microsoft to change it.

Official Xbox Magazine has revealed how Microsoft’s next-generation platform will utilize the new reputation system for online play. Currently on Xbox 360 players are identified by stars and type of players they are. However, it doesn’t actually work, nor does it get rid of the trolls despite the amount of stars they have.

Xbox One will be making sure that trolls and people who say rude comments to others for no reason will be placed with other players that behave exactly the same way they do. This way, all the competitive gamers will be together, trolls will be with trolls and so on.

Here is the full speech from Microsoft’s senior product manager Mike Lavin discussing how the new reputation system will work.

The new reputation system will be different from Xbox 360 that “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.”

Laving continues to talk about how matchmaking will match players with similar reputations.

“So there’ll be very good things that happen to people that just play their games and are good participants. And you’ll start to see some effects if you continue to play bad or, or harass other people en masse. You’ll probably end up starting to play more with other people that are more similar to you.”

He continues to state that players will not be able to reduce someone else’s reputation on purpose.

Let’s just be clear, there is no way at all that a conglomerate of people can conspire to sink your Reputation on the system,” he said.

“The way that it’s built fundamentally stops that. It’s very much over a period of time. 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.”

The whole new reputation system sounds decent to me, and I am looking forward to seeing how it evolves once Xbox One gets set up with a big install-base on Xbox Live.

Sound off in the comments below and tell us what you think of the new reputation system for Xbox One.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more news and updates.

Source: OXM