New Xbox Live community gives bad players yellow and red cards

Xbox One's new Live community will take a few cues from association football about poor sportsmanship. A green profile card means "Good Player", a yellow card means "Needs Improvement", and a red card means "Avoid Me."

But how does Xbox Live sort players into these categories? Program manager Michael Dunn expanded on the new and improved community system in an Xbox Wire post today.

"We are simplifying the mechanism for Xbox One--moving from a survey option to more direct feedback, including things like 'block' or 'mute player' actions into the feedback model," Dunn said. "The new model will take all of the feedback from a player’s online flow, put it in the system with a crazy algorithm we created and validated with [a Microsoft Research] PhD to make sure things are fair for everyone."

You'll have to disregard several warnings to plunge into red card territory. Once you're there, you'll find yourself cordoned off to a certain extent by Xbox One's Smart Match system.

Players who repeatedly receive negative feedback over time will fare the worst, but the system makes it tougher to destroy people for no good reason; one rating from somebody who plays with you for 15 minutes counts for more than a dozen strangers who decide they want to ruin your day. A few negative reports every now and then are expected and won't mess up your standing.

Do you think these new measures will be enough to make Xbox Live's notorious online matches a friendlier place?