No one likes a spoilsport, especially when that spoilsport wants to ruin everyone’s online gaming fun by yelling offensive slurs/various other forms of verbal abuse in voice chat because they want to get the most of their headset in the very worst way. No one likes a gamer who quits a losing game out of rage, immaturity or simply poor sportsmanship.

On Xbox One, there is a new reputation system in place to both combat and deter the sort of behavior that can spoil the online gaming experience and Microsoft has now gone to the liberty of explaining it. According to the creators of the green and black game box, the Xbox One reputation system will rank players into several tiers. In familiar traffic-light like colors of green, orange and red, the worst of the worst will find themselves branded with the latter, while those who play nice get the green light to go ahead and enjoy themselves.

While the “Good Player”, “Needs Work” and “Avoid Me” labels will be assigned on the fly with a back-end algorithm, the code’s results will be displayed loud and proud on each Xbox Live player’s playercard, meaning that there’s little to no avoiding the reputation rating that each player has been lumped with.

Furthermore, Michael Dunn, program manager at Xbox Live, explains the systems complicated back-end gubbins with the following

“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.”

While there is a strong case to be made against player reputations being put in the hands of a relatively untested code and other, possibly disgruntled gamers, Microsoft is making it clear that for the majority of players there’s no need to worry. While they feel that most players will fall into the green category, the system will reportedly adjust to those who receive false reports and anyone who finds themselves dipping into orange or red territory will be given reputation warnings beforehand to turn their behavior around.

However, should these red rated players not heed Microsoft’s warnings and buck up their ideas, they may find themselves being tangibly punished, with the possibility of pared down matchmaking in online games, along with restriction to services (such as being barred from Twitch broadcasting) being on the cards. On the other hand, previous suggestions that players would be rewarded for good behavior have yet to be confirmed by the company.

According to Dunn, Xbox's "goal is to match you with other gamers you’ll enjoy, and create the best gaming community online," and that's admirable. Whether this serves as a worthy deterrent, or if things continue on Xbox Live as normal are yet to be seen, but we’ll keep you posted once we know more.

Source: Xbox Wire