This topic has been on my mind for a while. I want to say I'm a bit sensitive to how people view me in online gaming, and personally, I don't try to be mean or pick to anyone. I don't do it in real life, and I really try NOT to be that kind of gamer online.
My first real online gaming experience was Halo 3 back when it launched in 2007. I had dabbled in online games on other people's PC or consoles, but Halo 3 was my first jump into online gaming under my own tag (Sincap). Playing online was intimidating at the time, and still can be for anyone who plays Halo. The game following is so deep, you can bet 20% of players in any match are likely experts, or pro, standings in terms of their gameplay effort, and knowledge of maps, objectives etc. As I played in the early stages I would get frustrated and verbally vent. I think after a month or so of this I happened to be navigating in the Xbox dashboard to update my profile and I saw the section about "view your rep." Checking this information I was pleasantly surprised to see my rating was fairly high w/ a high acceptance record of players who prefer to play with me. I did have some negative marks against me for unsporting conduct and other feedback, I assume likely tied to my online yelling and bitching. Yes, I admit I was harsh at times and called out specific players for it.
I'm conscious, or try to be, of my online behavior and besides verbal antics, I don't TRY to pick on players. I hardly boost where it affects others' gameplay, and I definitely do not cheat. However, I noticed as I've been playing Bad Company 2 over the past year, when I go to check in on my rep, it has fallen, FAR, and continues to decline. My current rep shows that 46% of players prefer me and 56% avoid me.
Part of me is unhappy my online personal is in this state. My rep has no affect on my online experience and it's not like Microsoft has come knocking on my door to ask for a change in behavior. I would like to think anyone could play w/ me and like me. On the other hand, some of my online friends say they would like a negative rating, b/c in their mind it means they are really good, and therefore the lower the rating, the better they are doing. People hate good players on the opposition? Sporting? Odd way to look at it, but it makes me assume that people act like jerks online just for this effect.
So, back to my original reason to bring this up. My rating is low, and I'm sensitive to it. I can't blame a game for my rating, but I do wonder what is going on that people down rate me like this. I've reached max rank in BC2 and I've noticed the longer I've been at this rank and continued to play online, the faster my approval rating dropped. People have messaged me accusing me of cheating, but I'm not sure why or how they thought I did so. I've had hate messages from people accusing me of things I know I did not do...it was someone else in game (aka circle strafing), but I guess since I finished that match at top score and show as level 50, people assume it was me?
I only ever down rate players if they message me w/ harassing comments, or if they were cheating in game. Cheating is very hard to do over Xbox Live, but if someone is exploiting game bugs, and doing it to create an unfair match, yes I will down vote a player on that. Cheating ruins the experience. I've had to do this quite a few times and I encourage it for anyone else to hopefully help deter people from doing it in the future.
A good thing w/ online ratings is that they are anonymous. This can lead to people just feeling bothered and then doing anything they can to destroy another person's online rating b/c they were upset. However, if you consider that it's a small effort to rate someone, then only those who are serious about really putting in that feedback will be going through the effort.
As a gamer, have you checked your rep? Do you care? If it was high or low, would you change anything you do or just dismiss it and carry on business as usual?
Just as a side note, I read an excellent book called "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez. For anyone who loves gaming, and is a tech enthusiast, this 2 book series is a great read. One of the concepts in the story is around the creation of a 3 dimensional network that only people wearing special LCD glasses can view information and manipulate. The interesting point to me was that wearers of the glasses are part of the network and carry a gamertag and player rating w/ them. The individual wearing the glasses can ID other people in the network b/c they will show their gamertag and rating over their head, almost like you would see in an avatar world. The neat part to me is that if this were applied in real life for everyone, then as you interact w/ your daily routine, you can see which people are 5 star nice, vs 1 star dickheads. Imagine life like this. It could be neat, and disastrous, many people in so many ways.
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