I haven’t announced it yet, but that is coming. Stay tuned.
For most (but not all) of IC’s history, players have been able to hide behind round-specific names with no linkage to their master account. This lets players play anonymously, and as we all know, when people are anonymous they are empowered to act without responsibility to their reputation.
We have a thread about Playing undercover if you’re more interested in the arguments for and against it.
It’s one of many things that we need to address to fix what is at its core a communication problem. Another big one is revamping the ingame message feature so that it can make use of the same flagging/moderation tools that we have here in the forum.
If you think the forum is bad, my god the stuff that people send each other in game is horrendous.
But then, there’s also the way people talk to each other here in the forums, including in this thread here. Some players dislike each other to the extent that any public exchange devolves into personal attacks that dance the line between trash talk and harassment, and is a pain in my ass to balance moderation against censorship.
In short: players need to stop being assholes to each other. The game needs to do its part to help by offering:
- Better communication mechanisms
- More balanced gameplay that makes losing less frustrating
- More things to focus on besides just rank
#2 is currently being addressed via the Redesigned Battle Logic and Formula work. The other things will be solved too.