Hope the renewed Banhammer swings swift & true as always :)

by kapowaz, Wednesday, August 07, 2013, 02:29 (3924 days ago) @ Pyromancy

We know it will
Because adding in 4 character gestures is not going to help encourage positivity or prevent negativity within the inevitable sect of griefers

This is part of why I think Bungie needs to be a little more forthcoming in their dialogue with the community. A game like Destiny, like any MMO, will involve a massively greater degree of investment on the part of players, and so bans come with a far, far higher cost. My understanding* is that bans handed out in Halo were always permanent and given for egregious incidents of cheating. I still assume that will be the case, but there will almost certainly be a raft of other, more minor offences possible in Destiny, ranging from the antisocial to the actively disruptive.

I'm obviously speculating here, but let's say somebody discovers a gameplay bug which permits a player to ‘bring home’ a hostile and dangerous enemy, which then goes on a rampage in the Guardian Tower, killing players all over the shop. Does this player deserve a ban? Maybe. Permanent? Hmm, maybe not. Luckily we do have analogues in other MMOs, but if you recall the Zul Gurub plague in World of Warcraft, whilst this lead to a lot of disruption for low-level players at the time, it was also a fascinating incident which people even talked about in terms of how pandemics spread.

I suspect that whatever safeguards Bungie has put in place, there will be players who will make it their job to try and be disruptive to others whilst staying within the official rules of the road. I'm very curious to hear how Bungie intends to deal with these and other similar offenders.

*I could be wrong — I've not heard of any temporary XBL bans, but maybe they did exist?