FYI: Left 4 Dead 2’s player blocking feature

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A few months ago I wrote the first "For Your Information" about all of those DirectX installations on your machine, and it turned out to be curious enough information according to the responses I got through our site and a few others. Fortunately there's a lot of these gem responses from Valve on their Steam forums, but they're quickly buried by other posts. I'm here to help find and bring them to light.

Trying to deal with griefers inside of your game server can be a tedious task. A server admin would usually ban problematic players through the console with the help of a server modification. But, in this new world of "official servers," there's fewer and fewer humanoid admins to take care of the problem. So how does a company like Valve remove these guys from your gaming experiences automagically? One way is to create a global player blocking system.

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So back in December, Valve added a player blocking system to Left 4 Dead 2. In short, this feature allows a player to block another player, basically disallowing the two to play in the same server together. But because this globalized feature is left in the hands of you, it has stirred up the community, and has spawned a rather large argument about griefers and their potential ability to disrupt this new system.


Well, Chet Faliszek crawled out of the woodwork to lay out a rebuttal – in this forum post.


Chet layed down some simple logic to start, perhaps also outlining the key principle for this feature. He said that "If someone is a jerk, they are a jerk." And by nature this will manifest in other ways that will only hurt the griefer in the long run, as intended.

There are more people playing than you think. Many, many, more. If you can reach an official server, you are in an area where there are more than enough people to support you if you yourself aren't the jerk. We hope hardcore jerks DO have a problem finding games.

Jerks don't have one or two reports/blocks, they have 10s of reports. They don't have three people conspiring to block them. They have 20 completely random strangers on the Internet all deciding they no longer want to play with them.

So in tangent to this fact, as time goes on and as good players are reporting problematic players, this system of blocking will work itself out in any case. A griefer, is a griefer, is a greifer. Overtime, this network of blocks will morph into a web, and griefers will be stuck on the other side away from you.

If jerks who behave horribly have fewer games to play in - good. Giving power to the players is always a goal. They get to decide who they want to play with. It really is that simple.

Chet said that the blocking players features will be released with their future games and will continue to be improved upon. If you'd like to read more of what Mr. Faliszek had to say, you can read his post here, and you can join in on the debate as well.

 

[ríomhaire]

Looking through that thread, I think a lot of people aren't really thinking their arguments through. A bunch of things like "what if someone goes around and blocks like every player! Then you won't be able to join his games!" Well, why the hell would I want to join a game with that idiot?

They just introduced this into the TF2 Beta (as a server option, not mandatory). Seems like it might be a bad idea there though. L4D has a small group that can easily be ruined by one griefer. TF2 on the other hand you'll usually be playing with 12-30 people. One asshole probably won't ruin the game and L4D you're usually either trying to get a tight-knit game with friends (where you definitely won't want a griefer) or just joining through the matchmaking, so it can automatically filter out the ones with asshats for you. For TF2 though I imagine most people still use the server browser rather than the game-finder so not being to join your favourite server because someone you blocked (or someone who blocked you) joined it? Well, that's probably not worth it. They could be intending it mainly for use on the official Valve servers, which aren't policed and I imagine which are usually joined from the game-finder rather than the server browser.

 

[bobtheskull]

I can see how that would eventually be worth it with the L4D games. I've had too many games where one sodding player is a dick and ruins it.

I agree with riom though. It could be a major problem in TF2 being locked out a server for no reason other than someone who blocked you is in first.

I can also see it being abused too. What happens if you are kicking butt, and are Dominating someone? Can they chose to block you, therefore blocking you from your server just because you got 5 kills against them? That'd piss me off...

 

[Bjorng]

This reminds me of that time I griefed my team in L4D2. I spent my health items on 2 injured teammates after reviving them both in the middle of a tank fight. Then a smoker got a hold of me while my team went ahead and even turned a corner. They eventually came for me, revived me and left me to limp behind them since I had no health items and I suppose they were keeping theirs in a tough-to-reach back pocket. I was grabbed again by a smoker and a spitter did her thang at which point my teammates started insulting me (apparently pressing W is too complicated for me they said) and voted to boot me. Man i'm an asshole
But yeah this system works fine by me.