A major problem with online games, especially ones with headsets is that you get massive amounts of homophobic, racial, derogatory, and sexist slurs from all angles from the incredibly immature community. It is also the #1 reason I keep everyone’s mics muted without discrimination whenever I play because of such thickwits.
Theyarch’s lead designer for the multiplayer says “We talk about this all the time. We can design as many mechanics as we want into the game to try to encourage teamwork and encourage good gameplay behaviors, but, at the end of the day, players are just going to act how they want to act. It’s a challenge. We’ve provided some infrastructure with Black Ops; it’s easy to mute players if they’re being offensive.”
Basically, people who are immature jackasses with enough harsh language to make a veteran sailor blush are pretty much unstoppable in their poor command of English. They have seen success in having the community police itself with report however.
In real life, I have a rather foul mouth of my own, casually dropping the odd profanity every now and then, but online, I am rather civil except to people that are total jerks to everyone. I find that the most important part of any online game is the community, which a few are seriously heavily lacking in which in turn puts me straight off the game.
There is nothing you can do about people wanting to curse their heads off online, but the penalties if any are pitiful. Ban them for a week, they’ll either get around it or just play something else and swearfest there. In all honesty, I think that players who violate rules should take blows to their scores, experience, and statistics instead of being disallowed to play. Having to work off a massive EXP debt for your foul mouth would shape them up overnight.
