Helldivers 2 director turns to community for advice on how to get meta-enthusiasts to stop kicking other players

Back in my day we had a thing called "server software" where we could host our own servers and there would usually be some active referee in the form of an admin on or available to call upon to take care of problem players instead of relying on a vote system that can be abused by the very problem players it aims to handle.

Have you thought about that, Arrowhead?

Oh please no.
There was nothing worse than some power tripping server admin banning people for whatever bullshit they felt like.
- Or those freaky as fuck hatless severs... shudders
- Most people who complained about that either never tried to find good servers, of were asshats that either didn't realize their the issue, or knew they were and are just trying to smear ppl caus3 fragile ego.
Doesn't this not really fix the problem, though? If the problem is that players are kicking others repeatedly for unjustifiable reasons, having a dedicated server basically just means the server owner retains the right to kick for unjustifiable reasons, the same way a host does now.
- And then everyone leaves that server. You'd advertise the rules in the server title so people would go with people who want to play the same
Being able to selfhost game servers and allow only friends to join is sweet, I wish more games still allowed LAN connections to a selfhosted server without going through online services.
Genuinely curious, how do you think that would work for a game like helldivers 2?
- It's not like there aren't other P2P live service games (can't think of any with dedicated server hosting but there's no reason it couldn't work the same). They verify your content with 1 server the devs host, and then it scoots you off to the actual game server which could be hosted by anyone.
  Edit: Actually isn't that how Minecraft Realms work, kinda? You don't physically host it, but you can do whatever you want with it and it still works with the store content and such. I've never messed with one, personally so I'm not 100% sure. Only the Java version server.
  Of course, those could also be modded and have more ways around verifying legit content you paid for allowing you to have everything for free, and that's what they don't want.

Make each kick add more time to a cooldown before the host can kick again. It still allows kicking but prevent aggressive kicking for nonsense reasons like not following the meta.

Or change the meta often enough to remove any clear ideas of what the meta is.

Many years ago when I played MTG we had a random buff and a random debuff every game night so that powergamers couldnt always dominate with the same deck.
Tonight... anything requiring green mana costs 1 extra uncolored to cast and artifacts cost 1 uncolored less to play.

I don't really like the idea of splitting queues into people who are hardcore following the meta vs completely relaxed. But I also hate queueing for higher difficulties and getting matched with level 5 players who don't have a Booster unlocked yet.

The thing that seems to work pretty well in deep rock is that you can create a server and name it. Usually it's something like greenbeards (noobs) welcome. No cryo (it contradicts fire damage) or what level you have to be at min. Just things like that. I think that would filter out a lot of problems like that. But the drg community also seems way more lay back than the helldivers community.
- Good on ya for bringing up Deep Rock Galactic; I also agree the system in that game works ok...but also the community in DRG (I'm my opinion) is way more welcoming...I don't know why that is, just from my experience.
- Yeah, when it's
  20+ RANK, NO GOLD MINING, NO ENGI NUKE
  vs
  havin a gay old time
  you usually pick the second one if you want a better experience lol
  Tbf, though, while I do my best to be noob friendly, I've had a moment recently when there were, like, 3 greenbeard scouts in the random group I was playing with that were doing jack. I guess I was in a bad mood that day, so I just host-disbanded that game. Kinda feel bad about that still lol
Eh that's just casual/competitive mode like in every other game.
I don't think it needs to be two separate queues, just matchmaking could add it as a preference.

They can't. There is nothing they can realistically do. Players like that will always exist.

EDIT: I see some people suggesting some wild solutions. Let me offer my opinions on them:

Someone suggests allowing players to block other players so they never get matched with them again

This is not healthy for a game with matchmaking to allow players direct control over its matching system like this. In a PvP game this would especially be a problem, but it has problems in PvE games as well. In this situation, meta players would just block other non-meta players, effectively lowering the matching pool to two different queues in a single large pool. In this scenario, it would be more efficient for the matchmaking system to just have two separated queues, which brings me to the next point.

Someone suggests having a toggle for players to pick between basically "Competitve/Meta Only" and "Casual/Social"

This would not be helpful either, because players will ignore these tags. They will queue into Social, and then procede to play like its Competitve. This is already a major problem in basically every other online game on the market. And its also one that realistically cannot be solved because it relies on trusting the player to behave, which is impossible.

Someone suggests to apply a penalty to a player if they have a certain amount of kicks within a short time period

While this is perhaps the best option, it still has its issues. There may be genuine cases where a player is repeatedly matched with disruptive or AFK players and chooses to kick in those cases. Those players should not be penalized. Sure, the number may be statustucally small or even insignificant, but as a PvE game its important that no legitimate player is penalized, or forced to play with disruptive players for fear of being penalized.

Someone likely has suggested or will suggest a system where players can report a player and after a certain amount of reports then the account is flagged/etc.

Mass reporting. Mass reporting is why these kinds of tactics aren't great.

In the end, gamers can be simplified into two categories: Math Bois and Explorer Bois. Its very difficult for the two to get along because the way they derive fun is opposite to each other.

Math Bois: They like when number get bigger. They will avoid anything that isnt peak optimally efficient. They're the players that play only meta playstyles because it is the peak, most mathematically efficient way to play. To them, its fun when the numbers are as big as possible and they're able to abuse and exploit systems in a game to make the numbers bigger. These are the kinds of players to play hundreds of hours in games like League of Legends.
Explorer Bois: They like to explore. Usually, these players will take actions they know are mathematically inefficient, but it might take them to a more interesting location, or they may be able to play a build that is uncommon/new. Sometimes they will purposely avoid meta items or playstyles simply on principle that they are meta. These players tend to not care much at all about numbers, but rather derive fun from trying new things or new ways to play. These are the kinds of players to spend hundreds of hours in games like Skyrim, and will usually have the entire map explored.

Regarding your point on not being able to be matched up against blocked players:
This is not healthy for a game with matchmaking to allow players direct control over its matching system like this. In a PvP game this would especially be a problem, but it has problems in PvE games as well. In this situation, meta players would just block other non-meta players, effectively lowering the matching pool to two different queues in a single large pool. In this scenario, it would be more efficient for the matchmaking system to just have two separated queues, which brings me to the next point.
I would argue the opposite. Vermintide 2 employs this exact thing and it’s been working pretty well - it actually does punish people who get blocked a lot by other people, and if you’re being blocked by a ton of people, there’s probably more than just “skill issue” and “you’re not running meta” going on. You do get sweaty people who block non-sweaty people, yeah, but it’s not hampering the community of the game in the slightest - and that game is waaaaaay smaller in size than something like Helldivers where you can get blocked by a ton of people and still play with other people due to the sheer size of the playerbase.
- My response to this is to mention how Xbox Live worked back in the early days of the Xbox 360, which had the Account Reputation System which basically was something similar but worked across multiple games that supported it.
  Very skilled players or sweatys were being blocked and reported by a lot of unskilled players or non-sweatys, and because of that their Xbox account reputation was low. This caused very skilled players to have difficulty finding a match in matchmaking games, in some cases still searching for other players for more than two or three hours. Back then blocking a player blocked both their ability to message/invite/etc you as well as blocking them from being able to match with you in online games. The Xbox 360 had a monumental playerbase, especially in games like Halo 3 or Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Thats why it can still remain a problem. While Helldivers 2 is a PvE cooperative game, there is no reason that skilled players or meta players need to necessarily be so severely punished for playing the game in the way they like to play.
  Its an issue where you basically have to create Competitve and Casual queues, and hide them from the players and automatically put them into the right queue based on the way they play the game for a few qualifying matches. The issue with this approach is if a player is inconsistent, or if an account is shared with multiple people, or if a player is a rare case of being a bit in both categories I mentioned previously.
- Yeah, I don't really see the downside to those kind of players walling themselves off
I just think the game needs to tone down the insanity a just bit so one bad player, or even just two mediocre players, doesn’t spell imminent failure. Or just improve rewards for failures. 40 minutes is a lot of irl time to have completely wasted if you fail. A lot of people just don’t have that kind of time to burn.
- They might want to level gate higher difficulty missions. You can pull your own weight not playing meta, I personally don't play meta and do fine even on 8 and 9 difficulty. It is frustrating when a low level player uses inappropriate orbital/eagle strikes on targets which wastes time or does not know the general size of a strike causing friendly fire. I don't mind that on lower levels, people got to learn somehow but it sucks when a level 13 eats up all your reinforcement budget then causes an extraction failure because they decided to throw out a danger close 120mm barrage causing the loss of that missions super samples.
I’m not sure that your two categories of gamers are necessarily mutually exclusive. I’d consider myself somewhere in both of those camps. For instance, I have hundreds of hours logged each on a range of open world games like Skyrim, BotW, WoW etc. but I also love to play incremental games which satisfies my mathy brain. I’m generally a min/maxer and completionist and in RPGs this often means exploring every location, killing every enemy and collecting every item before progressing the main story, so as to be maxed out at all points in time. I’m not a big PvP fan, but when I do engage in PvP I tend to find some balance between whatever the meta is and whatever my personal playstyle ‘feels’ is right.
- Yes, it is possible to be a little bit of both. However, in general, most players are in one or the other.

Replace kicking with reporting. Only kick when a reporting threshold has been met, this will likely need some tweaking and should be kept secret.

Group everybody with high rates of submitting reports into a separate queue to keep all the toxic players away from the normal players. Normal players don't have to deal with their bullshit, and they can all be miserable together, blaming each other for their own failures.

There are some justifyable reasons for kicking though. It's abuse of that process that is causing issues.
I do like the idea of grouping people with high incidents of kick actions though. It wouldn't be an instant fix but over time the two camps should separate out fairly nicely.
- You could still kick people. You could start off with setting the threshold low like you get two reports in the same match and you get kicked. But telling a 12 year old that he can get rid of somebody else in the game is just giving him too much power and he's going to abuse it.

Rainbow 6: Siege has been making massive strides in the realm of reducing community toxicity. The player reputation system lets players report toxic players, griefers, and cheaters which lowers their reputation. At the end of each match, players can commend their teammates (and the entire other team) for specific positive characteristics. Players with low reputations get sanctions, and players with high reputations receive bonuses that increase chances for in-game rewards, and occasionally receive thank-you gifts for being positive influences in the community, like alpha packs (loot crates). It’s a solid system and I immediately noticed not just a decrease in toxicity but an increase in positivity when these systems were implemented.

In theory, you could start match people with low reputations together, and people with high reputations together.

As someone who will never play these games ( not my thing), how is this implemented? I would assume that expecting users to rate other players would be burdensome and wouldn’t have the legs to work over a long period of time.
I truly like the idea, as the toxicity in online gaming is a primary reason I will never play these games, but I also wouldn’t want to personally rate the folks I play with every match either. Just lazy. But if it was easy and streamlined I wouldn’t mind it.
Just curious on how it all works I guess.
- Dota 2 and overwatch does something similar, it's simply a quick click after the match above the players name.
  Overwatch rewards you with battle pass exp and a symbol showing how many times you've been commended
  Dota 2 simply shows you've had less then X amount reports and your behaviour score after X amount of matches
- The commendation screen is shown for an unskippable amount of time (unless you quit the match) at the end of the match, before the post-match summary which is when you’d see the scoreboard, level progress, and battle pass progress. The commendation screen shows you the player cards of all 4 of your teammates, each with 3 buttons representing the different commendations you can give someone - one for being a good teammate, one for being a leader and helping coordinate your team’s actions, and one for dedication to the match. You can commend each player once per day, and for a given match you can give 2 commendations. Picture 4 columns with 3 rows. When you click a single row for a given column, that column is greyed out so you can’t commend that player again. When you click a second commendation, all of the buttons are greyed out. For the opposing team, you’re given a single button prompt: “was the opposing team fair/well-sporting? Press F5 for yes, F6 for no”
  All in all, for commendations the game asks players to click 2 buttons and press 1 key. It’s extremely intuitive and if you’re stuck on the screen for 10 seconds, you might as well engage with it.
  Anything that negatively affects a player’s reputation is done ad-hoc. If someone’s teamkilling or destroying their own team’s gadgets or intentionally making it difficult for their own team to win or using slurs or something, it’s up to individual players in the match to pull up the scoreboard at will, select their name and hit the report button. Otherwise, the game also automatically reduces a player’s reputation for actions the devs have deemed disreputable, like friendly fire, teamkilling and destroying team gadgets.
  It’s an extremely easy system to engage with, and I’m really looking forward to when they start implementing more rewards for high-reputation players.
They got rid of the weekly renown grind and then gave like 1/10th of it back if you act nice. Stellar.
- I’m confused. What “weekly Renown grind” are you talking about? And no, you don’t get Renown for having a good reputation. But yes, rewarding players for being friendly is absolutely a good thing.

You can't punish, only reward. Reward players who don't kick during a campaign with the premium credits, even if you need to adjust your shop values to make it feasible. It won't completely mitigate it and it may punish people who are actually getting trolled but one seems far more prevalent then the other and it should affect at least a small amount of the high players who want cosmetics and don't have the money to pay for them

My back-of-the-napkin suggestion is just make everything broken but Helldivers themselves more fragile. Give the breaker more time between shots.

Allow the host to share their own strategems with their team. Then allow the host to set up automatic loadouts for their teams to choose whether to adhere to or not. If a player already has a preferred stratagem, they use their own. Otherwise they commandeer that one from the host. They would also be free to change to their own equipment if they want to.

Or just, you know, make the game a little easier so it doesn’t require only the most meta players to progress at a reasonable pace. I’m not a meta player, but I really can’t blame them with the difficulty of this game.

I would love to relay some of my positive experiences with Rainbow 6: Siege's reputation system to him... if he didn't just prompt for input on Xitter...

It looks like you're not especially familiar with HD2. Helldivers 2 has NINE difficulty levels, which you once again have to opt into. There is a degree of reward limitation, in that you have to be up at difficulty 7 or higher to get all possible reward types, but the meta-or-kick problem exists well beyond just the highest difficulty.

hire some people to make sure your service runs nice for your customers, dipshit

What would that job description be? "Get it gud" doesn't seem to be helpful.