Massively flawed Reputation system

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Ok so, i’m sure most of you have seen one or two stories about how players are having their rep desecrated due to other users blocking/reporting them.
I’m here to add mine and hopefully spread a little awareness on the subject.

I’ll start with, I love halo, always have. I love them all. (yes reach & 4 included) now, I also love a little banter, and yes I have both sent people messages and received them myself. Some a little unprofessional but hey, when someone betrays you for a power weapon, or camps, glitches out the map etc…you get a little annoyed right? well, I just tell them.

So anyway, I got Gears of war a couple of days ago, began playing no problem, I did quite poorly if i’m honest (probably let my team mates down a little) hey! I was rusty! but yeah, no worries there. So my friend comes online a few hours later, all ready to hop online with me, and what happens? we’re stuck in the matchmaking lobby. Why? we don’t know, I was playing fine just now right? it must be something to do with him? we wait and wait. nothing.
Only when our next friend joins the party do we finally understand “hey ginge, why is your rep on avoid me?”…what? what do you mean? so I look and wow, so it is, what the hell? after a while I leave the group and allow my friend to search solo, Boom, he finds games no sweat. I then begin to search solo like I was before he came online, and! nothing. I cant find a single game. I load up halo (my life) and I could of cried. I couldn’t find a single game in any playlist.

So, I log on to my profile on xbox.com to find that I’ve had 3 bad communication feedbacks in the last 6 months. 3, in 6 months? and I can no longer find a matchmade game on any game that I own. I hop on to the chat with Microsoft, “yes nothing to do with me, you need to go to the enforcement forums on the website” right fine, let’s take a look then.
I see a bunch of people all asking why their rep is low, and how they can fix it, asking, what Microsoft are doing to prevent the abuse of this system. every single one of them had the same scripted reply given to them. It went along the lines of;

“Your feedback has been lowered because of violations consisting of but not limited to (commence list of random things)” and at the bottom give them links to the code of conduct to refer to. The questions these people were asking simply went unanswered, some of them, were pretty damn important too. For example “how am I supposed to get my rep back up, when I need t play online games without being reported, if I can’t actually find a game due to having low rep…” they didn’t answer them.

Regardless, I do what i’m told and write my own post to see what can be done. It may take up to 24 hours for your post to be accepted to the forum or declined by a Moderator"
Right, best keep it as charming as I can so they don’t just refuse me then. I wait a good 30 something hours…(sleep, work, so on) NOW! It gets worse here. I go on my smartglass (xbox companion app for those who don’t now) and it tells me my rep is green again! so happy, like, really happy. I couldn’t wait to hop back on Halo. I ask my friend to log on and check on his friends list and double check, yep it’s all good. We arrange a night on games, I get home…Can’t find a game. I check my profile just incase and there it is…still red.

I get back on to Microsoft support (sorry this is so long winded) I tell him my concerns for the rep system, and how my rep hit rock bottom instantly without warning, how the enforcement team haven’t got back to me. He makes a note an says he’ll push my concerns through to them. Now, about half an hour later I get an email saying they’ve contacted me HOORAH! time to see what they say! I forgot to mention that I wrote them quite a detailed few paragraphs on everything, the abuse of the feedback system etc. I
asked them for a decent reply and not a link to their conduct, or a link to how to improve my rep via matchmaking.

I was appalled. They gave me the exact same reply as they did to everyone else. My detailed question/query was given the same reply as someone who simple said “can you please tell me why my rep is so low” I was so annoyed. I still am, infact, that was just an hour ago, I got quite angry and sent a reply back with a copy and past of my original post asking them to actually read it this time. I told them I’ve seen many cases like mine and I will spread the word that they clearly don’t give a damn. So, if you see me anywhere else, don’t be surprised.

I really, really hope my reputation is sorted by October 27th, please, god. have a great night all (in the UK here) this may not be 100% halo and I apologise.

TL;DR - well, you kinda do need to read it. Skim, at least.

2

I put in between +10 and +20 on average per game, and apparently i “need to practice”. Thanks Microsoft.

3

> 2533274962008908;2:
> I put in between +10 and +20 on average per game, and apparently i “need to practice”. Thanks Microsoft.

Friend, I’m not sure it even matters. People could report people who have only ever played a single game of halo. Just for being bad and losing them the match.
I’d be extremely careful, once your rep hits red, it seems to be game over.

4

The rep system is absurd I hope there is a huge backlash against this and it will make MS change how this is done. Hopefully 343 will also realize that utilizing the rep system for match making is equally absurd.

5

I agree that it shouldn’t return. Until such a time when MS restores the non-reputation altering avoidance options for too skilled/not skilled enough, too many innocent players are going to have their accounts de facto banned.

6

after visiting other forums to spread the word, I’ve seen hundreds of people complaining about this system. People who play madden, fifa, halo, gears of war. Anyone can be affected, and it can be so sudden.

there is,nothing you can do to protect your reputation, one day you could get home from work/school and fond that you can’t get in to a match made game.

they say play co-op and sure, some people have friends to do that with, but some dont. So if you cant do matchmaking or co-op then its literally impossible to regain rep and play online?

get real MS we PAY for the service.

7

Its always a great fear of mine that my rep will go red and i try to avoid as much communication with people as possible because of it.

8

Yup, it better be fixed before Halo 5 or I’m screwed when playing ranked from the salty reports

9

Yeah the reputation system needs a way to also add positive feedback. I get negative feedback all the time because i do really well all the time and people avoid me. I also did do a lot of quitting in mcc because all i get in btb is halo 3 or halo 4. I dont mind playing h4. h2c or h2a but im tired of halo 3. So yeah i quit maybe 50 games compared to the thousand something that i have played. Its bad that quitting effects other games that you play. Just ban me off the game or something like reach instead of effecting my multiplayer on any xbl game. I have went almost a week straight of no quitting and im worried that it will stay yellow until halo 5. i want it back to green.

I never had any issues with rep until mcc. Muting and people blocking me shouldnt ruin my reputation. Neither should quitting because mcc has so many different halo games that no one gets what they prefer and they then quit. I know quitting is dumb and stupid but that doesnt count the crashing, lagging out or other ways of games ending.

10

> 2533274799527886;7:
> Its always a great fear of mine that my rep will go red and i try to avoid as much communication with people as possible because of it.

> 2546678360738653;8:
> Yup, it better be fixed before Halo 5 or I’m screwed when playing ranked from the salty reports

> 2533274804406181;9:
> Yeah the reputation system needs a way to also add positive feedback. I get negative feedback all the time because i do really well all the time and people avoid me. I also did do a lot of quitting in mcc because all i get in btb is halo 3 or halo 4. I dont mind playing h4. h2c or h2a but im tired of halo 3. So yeah i quit maybe 50 games compared to the thousand something that i have played. Its bad that quitting effects other games that you play. Just ban me off the game or something like reach instead of effecting my multiplayer on any xbl game. I have went almost a week straight of no quitting and im worried that it will stay yellow until halo 5. i want it back to green.
>
> I never had any issues with rep until mcc. Muting and people blocking me shouldnt ruin my reputation. Neither should quitting because mcc has so many different halo games that no one gets what they prefer and they then quit. I know quitting is dumb and stupid but that doesnt count the crashing, lagging out or other ways of games ending.

Thank you for the replies guys. I really think we need to spread some awareness. Gamers like us can find the cause of not being able to get in to a match made game quite easily, yet a middle aged casual gamer or child who plays with them may not have a clue and get pretty frustrated about it.

This system is clearly being abused and is ruining many innocent gamers experiences. Does anyone have any info on how long they’ve had low reputation for? Or how long it took to get it back to green and doing what activity exactly?

11

I had this happen to me this week too, not currently red but a low Amber. Played two online games this weekend, in both I did ok score wise and didn’t give anyone any reason to file anything against me. I agree the system needs some work.

12

It’s obviously an issue of concern but it’s not a Halo or 343 issue. There’s a couple other threads on it around the forums and we don’t need another one.

But, for what it’s worth, my understanding is that they are aware it’s an issue and are looking into options.