Sony really needs to do provide better blocking options.

[NoLifeDGenerate]

Why is there still no proper recourse to deal with trolls/griefers in 2024. Especially in co-op games. It makes no sense that neither devs, nor platforms themselves offer proper options to truly block individuals you don't want to deal with. "Blocking" accounts on consoles only affects private communications, NOT even in-game chat. There's literally no way to keep people from rejoining your own lobby in most games unless you go private and stop meeting new players for the day. It's insane that this is what we're left with in 2024. We're NOT allowed to prevent specific people from ever playing with us again? We're supposed to keep our own, hand written blacklist to remember who to avoid? It's impossible to contact anyone at Sony/MS to raise awareness.

 

I recently had a rather disturbing evening on Earth Defense Force 4.1 (PS4) where kicking someone with no weapons or HP for the highest level missions in the game resulted in them coming right back after we started the mission, where they proceeded to spam in-game text to the point of obstructing the view trying to make the mission fail because we wouldn't let them in with level 0 weapons to die and be carried. It was obviously a troll account (PSNID began with "temp" so reporting it to Sony would be pointless because they won't console ban for communications and the person will just make another account if they account ban. The game has an option to disable text chat for the lobby, but it never actually worked. Our only recourse to get rid of the guy was to friend each other and run a private lobby the rest of the night. WHY? I've got 4200 hours on that game, and this is the worst troll I've ever run into. I attached a screenshot, but it only shows his in-game name.

 

I tried playing Sniper Elite 4 on PS4 last year and ran into a similar problem. Friendly fire is on for survival and can't be turned off unless you use custom settings (which nerfs XP gain). You try to play in public and meet some of the few people still on the game, but people will join and team kill everyone so you fail. The host can boot if they realize it in time, but odds are it's too late and it's a restart. You have to keep a list of people to kick before they spawn in. Again, WTF? Bad enough the game's leaderboards are full of obvious hackers that the devs did nothing about.

 

Xbox is no better. I still remember Halo Reach on Xbox360. The 360 had an "Avoid Player" option, but it literally never worked. I can tell you that for a fact because I played Firefight 16-18 hours per day and ran into the same people AFKing for XP/rounds survived on a daily basis. You had to play public for XP. There was no avoiding them. All you could do was quit, search again, and hope for 3 people that actually played. The devs could've patched the XP system to stop rewarding people for doing nothing, but they didn't. They reset a few people's ranks as a deterrent, but it did nothing. One guy got rank reset THREE times and was still AFKing.

 

It's been 3 generations of online gaming now, and we can't do better?

 

 

p.s. In case anyone wants to question the armor, see the playtime. 

 

Edited February 3 by NoLifeDGenerate

[DaivRules]

From a design perspective, the reason this hasn’t been perfectly solved yet is the opportunity for abuse generally outweighs the benefit. 

That and no one will actually pay the real cost it would take to have a full staff of full time real-time moderators (getting paid reasonable wages) to monitor and react to every game with online components as well as all of PSN. Every game with online components would be significantly more expensive. 

 

It’s easy to state the problem, it’s difficult to come up with a legitimate solution that mostly resolves all the aspects to consider.

 

Might be easier to figure out a way to make humans less shitty to each other. 

[NoLifeDGenerate]

2 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

From a design perspective, the reason this hasn’t been perfectly solved yet is the opportunity for abuse generally outweighs the benefit. 

That and no one will actually pay the real cost it would take to have a full staff of full time real-time moderators (getting paid reasonable wages) to monitor and react to every game with online components as well as all of PSN. Every game with online components would be significantly more expensive. 

 

It’s easy to state the problem, it’s difficult to come up with a legitimate solution that mostly resolves all the aspects to consider.

 

Might be easier to figure out a way to make humans less shitty to each other. 

 

I don't see how being able to block people from joining the same lobby is open to abuse. NOT being able to prevent them from trolling and griefing is abuse.

[DaivRules]

7 minutes ago, NoLifeDGenerate said:

 

I don't see how being able to block people from joining the same lobby is open to abuse. NOT being able to prevent them from trolling and griefing is abuse.

You can’t see the possibility that a bunch of people coordinate to block someone from joining any lobby?

 

 

[NoLifeDGenerate]

3 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

You can’t see the possibility that a bunch of people coordinate to block someone from joining any lobby?

 

 

No. It should only block the person from the lobby you're actually in. I don't see the problem. If multiple people block someone, it's probably for a reason. If I don't want to play with someone, I don't want to play with them. Why should I have to keep running away from people I don't want to play with?

Edited February 3 by NoLifeDGenerate

[DaivRules]

4 minutes ago, NoLifeDGenerate said:

No. It should only block the person from the lobby you're actually in. I don't see the problem. If multiple people block someone, it's probably for a reason.

And if multiple people go to separate lobbies and all coordinate to block the same person? Or someone follows a person from lobby to lobby, blocking them from each one?

Isn’t all this complexity avoided by just having more responsive report and moderation systems?

 

[NoLifeDGenerate]

3 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

And if multiple people go to separate lobbies and all coordinate to block the same person? Or someone follows a person from lobby to lobby, blocking them from each one?

Isn’t all this complexity avoided by just having more responsive report and moderation systems?

 

So what? The person can make their own lobbies and let people join. You act like a group could actually keep someone from playing a game. It's ridiculous.

[PalaceOfLove706]

Wouldn’t be great for people new to a game. You would just have people block every low ranked player so they would only get matched with decent players. Great way to kill off your online game. 

[Helyx]

39 minutes ago, NoLifeDGenerate said:

You act like a group could actually keep someone from playing a game. It's ridiculous.

 

But you're acting like one person is able to ruin your gaming experience. I could see how a group of griefers could bully an individual.

[farradono]

It wouldn’t stop at “trolls”, I could block any individual that could beat my ass at Street Fighter, and voilà, gold rank, I could even block people that aren’t “meta” in co-op games for wasting my time destroying the game’s activity, etc etc, too many loopholes to abuse.

[NoLifeDGenerate]

13 minutes ago, Helyx said:

 

But you're acting like one person is able to ruin your gaming experience. I could see how a group of griefers could bully an individual.

One person ruined it for the whole room that night. That's all it takes. Not being able to block is ridiculous. It only takes one jackoff to keep joining your lobbies and ruining shit.

11 minutes ago, farradono said:

It wouldn’t stop at “trolls”, I could block any individual that could beat my ass at Street Fighter, and voilà, gold rank, I could even block people that aren’t “meta” in co-op games for wasting my time destroying the game’s activity, etc etc, too many loopholes to abuse.

 

But that's not abuse. That's choosing who YOU play with. It's that simple. I used to have to dashboard Halo when I ran into a certain pair of trolls in the multi-team playlist (PVP). They absolutely ruined the game every time. Wasn't wasting my time with them.  It doesn't matter. It's not abuse to avoid unpleasant experiences online. I don't care who the top ranked person is. If I don't want to play against them, I'm not playing against them. Same principle. Why can't I avoid anyone who ruined my experience? Would you prefer running into someone who quits when they see you, or just not waste time running into that person?

Edited February 3 by NoLifeDGenerate

[Rebourne07]

1 hour ago, NoLifeDGenerate said:

I've got 4200 hours on that game

Wtf…y tho 

[PalaceOfLove706]

1 minute ago, Rebourne07 said:

Wtf…y tho 

Probably his favourite game. The plat took me almost 400 and I was done. OP has dedication because this game doesn’t have 4200 hours of content. 

[sepheroithisgod]

I think a big problem with recent games is cross-play. You are essentially asking the developer to create a system that will remember a PSN account that does not want to play with a specific player on Xbox, Switch, or PC. And with the latter, they can easily create a new account to circumvent this if they are a dedicated troll. It's not feasible.

 

I could be wrong, but when I remember older titles, blocking someone worked when they were just on that specific platform.

[NoLifeDGenerate]

6 minutes ago, sepheroithisgod said:

I think a big problem with recent games is cross-play. You are essentially asking the developer to create a system that will remember a PSN account that does not want to play with a specific player on Xbox, Switch, or PC. And with the latter, they can easily create a new account to circumvent this if they are a dedicated troll. It's not feasible.

 

I could be wrong, but when I remember older titles, blocking someone worked when they were just on that specific platform.

Blocking people never worked on consoles unless a game specifically did it. Like I said, blocking on PSN/Xbox only applies to private comms, not even game chat.

Edited February 3 by NoLifeDGenerate

[sepheroithisgod]

Just now, NoLifeDGenerate said:

Blocking people never worked on consoles unless a game specifically did it. Like I said, clocking on PSN/Xbox only applies to private comms, not even game chat.

I can say this wasn't the case on PS3, maybe it changed, but when I was younger, I used to block my friends as a joke and I always had to unblock them to get them back into a party for COD and whatnot. Not sure if something changed going forward as the only things I have ever blocked PS4 and onwards were bots.

[Dark_Overlord]

4 hours ago, DaivRules said:

You can’t see the possibility that a bunch of people coordinate to block someone from joining any lobby?

 

 

 

Had this issue with Binary Domain, you could never get a public match as they were all Japanese accounts playing and they would vote kick any non JP accounts within 30 secs or so.  I tried with my JP purchasing acc and they let me stay, never once got kicked 😕

Edited February 3 by Stevieboy
edited derogatory reference

[Lion_Squid]

1 hour ago, NoLifeDGenerate said:

 

I don't see how being able to block people from joining the same lobby is open to abuse. NOT being able to prevent them from trolling and griefing is abuse.

 

I play Dead by Daylight and people would 1,000% abuse this and simply block anybody for even the slightest reason. Play a character you don't like? Blocked. Used a build you don't like? Blocked. Made any mistake as a teammate? Blocked. Group of friends? Blocked blocked blocked blocked. Beat you? Blocked.

[NoLifeDGenerate]

3 hours ago, Dark_Overlord said:

 

Had this issue with Binary Domain, you could never get a public match as they were all Japanese accounts playing and they would vote kick any non JP accounts within 30 secs or so.  I tried with my JP purchasing acc and they let me stay, never once got kicked 😕

 

Left 4 Dead was always like that. You get it in EDf too, especially Japan. With Japan, it's discrimination. With the west, it's idiots too dumb to make a private lobby for friends only games.

Edited February 3 by Stevieboy
edited derogatory reference

[Ares_Peverell]

1 hour ago, NoLifeDGenerate said:

So what? The person can make their own lobbies and let people join. You act like a group could actually keep someone from playing a game. It's ridiculous.

You seem to not know the limits that people on the internet will go. 4chan is a great example of that.

[Milkyray]

I'm having the same issue trying to play  edf 4.1 online. I "only" have 500 hours in it, but i am stuck online at 50%, and playing solo offline got me to 90%... i'm not considering myself to be an expert player and am always willing to help people out, but there are a lot of people ruining my fun also lately because of disproportionately abusing the text chat. 😢

Edited February 3 by Milkyray
Spelling

[Dauersack]

38 minutes ago, Lion_Squid said:

 

I play Dead by Daylight and people would 1,000% abuse this and simply block anybody for even the slightest reason. Play a character you don't like? Blocked. Used a build you don't like? Blocked. Made any mistake as a teammate? Blocked. Group of friends? Blocked blocked blocked blocked. Beat you? Blocked.

How is that abuse? If anything that is self sabotage, if you keep blocking people from playing with you for any small, arbitrary reason, which should be something you can do in order to get the experience you paid for, eventually you will have next to no one left to play with, so you either stop blocking so many people or play with a dedicated group. Some people act like others have any rights to play with me, if I do not want to play with someone because he is a griefer then I shouldn't be compelled to just because the dev is too lazy to properly eliminate this kind of behavior and some brats think that they are entitled to other people interacting with them no matter how they behave.

[NoLifeDGenerate]

27 minutes ago, Milkyray said:

I'm having the same issue trying to play  edf 4.1 online. I "only" have 500 hours in it, but i am stuck onl i ne at 50%, and playing solo offline got ne to 90%... i'm not considering myself to be an expert player, and am always willing to help people out, but there are a lot of people ruining my fun also lately because of disproportionately abusing the text chat. 😢

You can add me if you want. I'll probably be around for a few more days, then I'll be trying Helldivers 2 when it releases. I've playing with a full room right now and tow of them actually have armor and over 90% completion. I haven't seen many folks near done lately. Just the usual low level, a couple 100%, and a couple 50ish.

9 minutes ago, Dauersack said:

How is that abuse? If anything that is self sabotage, if you keep blocking people from playing with you for any small, arbitrary reason, which should be something you can do in order to get the experience you paid for, eventually you will have next to no one left to play with, so you either stop blocking so many people or play with a dedicated group. Some people act like others have any rights to play with me, if I do not want to play with someone because he is a griefer then I shouldn't be compelled to just because the dev is too lazy to properly eliminate this kind of behavior and some brats think that they are entitled to other people interacting with them no matter how they behave.

 

Exactly. Someone gets it. Thank you.