You know what I had in my bio since the day bios were introduced? The word "ass", what a HORRIBLE word.. You might want to shield your eyes but the bio read "Duke Nukem: Kicking ass and taking names." Unbelievably offensive, I know.
90% of my time on the 360 this year has been spent playing Rock Band. I never quit out in the middle of a song and my headset doesn't even work with my guitar. Despite that, slooowly but surely my rep has been dropping.. It was at 86%, now it's down to 70%.. How is this possible? Because people are beginning to abuse the avoid player/file complaint system. While most players will only do it for a specific reason for others it can literally be for any reason, including the fact that they simply lost the match and got angry. Even just recently I watched my rep fall another 2% trying to play Castle Crashers online, a game that is currently notorious for booting players to the menu during the loading. I guess some people think everyone in the world is just quitting early.
Now this would normally not be a problem.. But.. There is a new trend on Live apparently. NO ONE EVER SETS ANYONE AS A PREFERRED PLAYER ANY MORE. The only time anyone did this was around the time 360 launched and people thought it mattered. Do you ever think to yourself "wow, I'm gonna set that person as a preferred player! huhu!"? Doubt it. But I bet you get a little twinge of anger every now and again over something and head right for the avoid player/file complaint. The whole system is flawed.. Players who file too many complaints should themselves be penalized in some fashion (perhaps have their complaints count for less), if only to make people more selective about WHO/WHAT they are complaining about. The funniest part of the whole system is when you add someone to your friends list they are NOT automatically set as a preferred player, which they should be.
Meh, that rant could go on and on. The point is the whole system is in need of an overhaul, a major one at that.
Perhaps you're wondering about my Duke Nukem bio thing containing the word ass. Well the good news is it only got me a 1 week suspension. Ass = 1 week. Don't I hear this word on cable television nightly? No warning, no "change your bio", no nothing, just the ol' ban hammer. It's pretty absurd really, it also goes to show it's banning automatically under some kind of criteria and no person ever reviews/investigates these complaints. I can't say I was too upset though, having no access to live is not a big deal for me. I was more worried about the all the money I'd spent on DLC/XBLA games/etc etc which are tied directly to my gamertag..
Maybe I am bitter and the system is impeccable? I dunno. One thing I know for sure is I would not be happy about losing 1K worth of downloadable content because Jimmy 12 year got angry over losing and decided the best course of action was to file a complaint.