Cape Town - There is nothing more frustrating than having a couple of toxic players in your lobby. We are all adults around here and can handle a certain amount of toxicity fairly well, but jabs about mothers with a string of profanities are not on, guys.
Luckily Amazon is working to fix this. Amazon has devised a potential solution to this ongoing problem by making toxic players only play against each other.
A new patent filing details Amazon Technologies' proposal for a system that allows "behaviour-aware player selection for multiplayer electronic games."
The filing was originally made in December 2017 but was only approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office last month.
Matchmaking systems in games often focus on grouping players based on skill level, but as the filing suggests, there are other considerations to take into account.
"While players may enjoy competing with others of a similar skill level, such systems naively assume that skill is the primary or only factor to players' enjoyment," it reads.
"Contrary to this assumption, players' enjoyment may depend heavily based on behaviours of other users with which they are paired, such as the proclivity of other players to use profanity or engage in other undesirable behaviours.
"Players who engage in such behaviours may be labelled as 'toxic' by other players. One mechanism for dealing with such players is to isolate all 'toxic' players into a separate player pool, such that one toxic player is paired only with other toxic players."
However, the filing does acknowledge that it is difficult to come up with a clear definition of 'toxic'.
Take the case of bad language.
Some players may be comfortable with bad language but consider quitting before its time as 'toxic'. Others may not mind premature quitting but view profanity as 'toxic.'
The filing suggests allowing players to select preferences for what they do and do not find acceptable. Players will then be grouped players together based on these preferences.
IOL TECH