- Hylebos
- |
- Fabled Heroic Member
- message user
Summary: Mute Bans in the Beta are broken, but don't bother fixing them, they aren't needed, and they aren't wanted in the final game.
I'll start off simple. Given some posts by Ferrex, you seem to be under the impression that if someone is mute banned, they will get notification telling them that they are mute banned, and that if their friends / random people want to hear them, they will be able to unmute you.
This is a complete falsehood. Nobody has ever gotten a notification that they are mute banned. We are left sitting around trying to figure out why nobody in matchmaking is talking. Is our headset broken? Did we accidentally set audio options to "Mute All"? Oh, and you said that our friends would be able to unmute us? No, no they can't. In order to talk to people, we are forced to use Party Chat.
However, I share these bugs not so that you can fix them in the final game. I do not want a mute ban at all in the final game. The concept behind the ban is flawed to it's core, and isn't worth pursuing, even if you think you can fix it.
First and foremost, did warning sirens in your heads not go off when you thought "Hey, let's make a banhammer which bans people completely from all communcations using only Subjective Evidence"? Because that's what mute bans are. Sure, you will end up getting all the racists annoying high-pitched players, but there is huge potential of people getting mute banned simply because other players do not like them. A lot of innocents have been and will be caught in the crossfire of the mute ban. And I don't care how much you are testing it to try to "make it safe", the benefits do not outweight the risks, so it isn't worth pursuing.
Tell me, how much time does it take to mute someone? Five seconds? Maybe ten seconds at most? That's all your mute ban is doing. It's saving people five seconds of effort. And the people who are banned are damned to hell. You might not realize this, but because we are automatically muted when we enter Matchmaking, the duality of the mute still applies, so not only can we speak, but we can't hear anybody else either. The completely shuts down all forms of team communcation. It's bad enough that we can't talk anymore, but now we can't even follow orders or gather information from the people who do have headsets? It's a joke.
Tell me, if I destroy my headset, and send you a video of it's destruction, can I get back the capabillity to listen to my team mate's frantic cries of "There's a guy with a sword behind you, kill him and we can win the game! You better not die or we will lose!" I would gladly burn my mic just so that I could hear people yell at me again.
And you do realize that most people don't even realize the Mute Ban is in effect in the beta, right? They do not appreciate the perfect utopia that you are trying to create from the shadows. A utopia where all the rude annoying players are rendered mute and deaf. In fact, most the players I've talked to think the mute ban is stupid. We aren't elementary students. We are adults. We can make informed decisions about who we want to hear and who we do not want to hear when playing matchmaking. What right do you have to decide who we should talk to for us?
I can understand why you would ban people for cheating. Cheating ruins the game, and players can't do anything about it, so it makes sense for you to step in and ban those players.
I can understand why you would ban people for boosting. Boosting ruins the game, and players can't do anything about it, so it makes sense for you to step in and ban those players.
I can understand why you would ban people for quitting. Quitting ruins the game, and players can't do anything about it, so it makes sense for you to step in and ban those players.
But no matter how I approach it, I can't understand why you would ban people with a mute ban. Annoying players may ruin the game, but players can easily solve the problem in five seconds. There is no need for you to step in and issue bans.
I started playing online games with Halo 3. Back then, I had a child account and no mics, and I was unable to hear anyone or speak to anyone, so I played the game in silence, ignorant to what players were saying around me. And I was happy. But when I upgraded to an adult account, I could finally hear what people were saying.
I was jealous, you know. They sounded like they were having a fun time, and I really wanted to join in and help out the team effort. So when the Beta came out, I went out and bought my first headset so I could finally participate with my team fully. I made sure to set my social preferences to look for chatty polite team players, so I wouldn't be pissing off people who prefered silent games.
I was in heaven. I was meeting all kinds of players, having fun, cracking jokes, enjoying the beta to the fullest. From my cloudy perch I looked back down on the earth that I was standing on only a few days ago and laugh at how silly a world without headsets were.
But then I got mutebanned. You robbed me not only of my voice, but my ears as well, sending me crashing down not to Earth, but straight to hell. It was like I had a child account again. The first think I thought to myself when I realized the awlful truth was "It would have been better if I had never bought a mic in the first place, at least I'd be able to still hear my team mates."
Do you know how bitter that makes me? I was feasting on the food of the gods, but it turned to ashes in my mouth and burned my throat. Mind, you, the process took several days as the denial and eventually horror of "I must be mute banned" set in, thanks to the fact that you forgot to add in that "You've been mute banned" notification.
Why was I mute banned? I don't have the foggiest idea. Nobody ever said my voice was annoying, or told me to shut up. To the best of my understanding, I got mute banned, because I was very talkative in Free For All. Apparently there is an unspoken rule there where "If you talk, you are going to get muted, because people like playing free for all without someone trying to make polite conversation in their ear."
Oh sure, there is a mute all option that I'm sure you expected these players to take advantage of, but they didn't, they just manually mute people. And thus, because I greeted everyone prior to a match, wished them a good game, and asked them what they though of the beta while playing free for all, I got mute banned.
What is a mute ban supposed to teach me anyways? If I get a quit ban, it teaches me not to quit. If I get a ban because I cheated, it teaches me not to cheat. But what does a mute ban teach me? "You are an annoying brat and as a result you are no longer fit to even listen to the voices of all the other angelic players in Matchmaking." Tell me Bungie, how am I going to correct the error of my ways? I am who I am. Should I go see a speech therapist so I don't talk as fast? Maybe work on the clarity of how I speak? If I pretend to be someone who I'm not, can I be allowed to participate in voice communications again?
Can you see what you fools have done? If the mute ban is allowed into the final game, even if you tweak it so that the hammer is better at interpreting the subjective, let me emphasize that SUBJECTIVE EVIDENCE it is given, instead of creating a Utopia where only the polite players are allowed to speak, you will have created a Nightmare of fear and paranoia.
Instead of playing the game and participating fully like we all should, players begin to get distracted by other thoughts.
"Should I wish plugging in my headset and helping out my team? They might not like me though, I do tend to stutter, and they might mute me, and I really don't want to get a mute ban, that would kill all chances of me being a helpful team mate. I think it's better to lose this match rather than risk becoming a worthless vegetable who brings down his team through lack of communcation"
"Should I mute this guy? He keeps talking to his friend about the amazing no-scope he got last game. It's really starting to bug me and distract my focus, so I really should mute him, but I'd feel bad if he was banned because of me. He's not a bad person afterall, he's just a bit excited, it would be wrong of me to mute him, so I'll guess I'll just have to endure it."
It's a world where thoughts of having fun is replaced by constant self-concious thoughts, evaluating if other players will accept them for who they are, or if they will mute them and rob them of their voice and ears.
Welcome to the Internet Bungie. Eventually, you'll find someone who simply doesn't like you. Give them a mute option, and they will take full advantage of it. Put in a banhammer that issues punishment on the basis of "These players didn't like this player in this time period, so it's banning time!", and you are set to send matchmaking to hell.
I don't see how I can make my point any more clear. Bungie. Kill the Mute Ban. It isn't worth your effort trying to make it work in a fair way, and we don't want it either. I don't want to live in fear in Reach of getting banned because I just try to be the person who I am inside.
Edit: If you are wondering where my 10,000 character rant on the Spiker went, well, that had to take a back burner to a far more serious issue. It can be found on Page 49 of this thread, if you wish to view it, but for now, I'm far more concerned with ensuring that the Mute Ban is abolished.
[Edited on 05.20.2010 6:55 PM PDT]