There are plenty of multiplayer games I adore. However, it seems like every community has these “brain dead”, patronizing, or out right toxic elements that are just nasty. I’d rather debate politics than make suggestions in some gaming communities because the responses are just so … annoying.
As an example, I once dared to suggest that a game developer implement a mode to prevent crouched status from rendering on death cams so that players that are bothered by t-bagging could avoid it (after a match where a friend rage quit because someone just kept head shotting him – possibly with cheats – and then t-bagging). This post got tons of hate, and like -50 upvotes on reddit because of course someone should be forced to watch someone t-bag them.
Another example on a official game forum… I made a forum post suggesting Bungie use Mastodon (or really just something else being my intent)… The response I got was some positivity but mostly just “lol nobody uses that sweetie” and other patronizing comments.
Meanwhile studios themselves often seem to be filled with developers that understand this stuff is a problem, and the lack of sportsmanship (or generally civilized attitudes) does push away players. It just doesn’t make sense to me that no studio is saying “get lost” to these elements or implementing anti-toxicity features. I just want to play games with nice normal people, is that really so much to ask?
You can still profit and coax people into behaving better at the same time. Most stuff you pay for; but have some exclusive things for getting enough good sport points. And to keep up their good behaviour, they will lose points for bad behavior and can have those items taken away from them if they fall below the points needed to have them in the first place.
Or hell; even lose your paid for items. Like taking away a child’s toy if they misbehave. This is basically what a ban is anyway.
My only issue with this is that the only current and reliable way to get these points on your record would be to take the word of other players making reports. You could always get enough friends to circle jerk each other for good guy points, the same way you can bully players now with bad behavior reports.
Nah, players won’t accept the latter, as for the former, yeah, except most games I’ve played don’t give cool cosmetics for “free” like that. Cause if the free ones are just as cool as the paid ones, fewer people will pay, and they don’t like that. The most sought after ones are always the store ones or the 1% content ones
But yeah, I’d love it if a game actually did that
I don’t think a paternal mindset is a good way to approach this, personally. It usually has more to do with feeling like you are in a position of authority and providing the gratification of passing judgment on the behavior of others, while not actually resolving the issue.