So I had an idea today that would make adding friends on Hearthstone a lot better: ‘reputation’. Picture this:
After you accept a new Hearthstone friend request, the game would give you the option to rate that player’s ‘reputation’.
If the newly added ‘friend’ turns out to be a troll and cusses you out, you could click the ‘reputation -1’ = ‘thumbs down’ button. This would remove them as a friend, and their ‘reputation’ would go down by one.
If the newly added ‘friend’ turns out to truly be a good sportsman and the kind of friend that the game wants to support, you could give them a ‘reputation +1’= ‘thumbs up’.
With this system running, whenever you get a new friend invitation, Hearthstone would let you know the sending player’s current reputation - so if they are constantly a jerk, they would have a low reputation, and you would know not to add them before you even press accept (or have a good idea what was about to happen if you DID click accept). And if their reputation is good, you could likely expect a new friend that was worth adding to your list. Even if they ended up acting poorly anyway, you could just thumbs them down and their reputation would drop accordingly.
Having played since 2014, I have found that in accepting pretty much all new friend requests, most players would be getting +1’s, but it seems that the people who make me want to give them a -1 have successfully scared most people from accepting new friends. A lot of games have really great moments - in fact, some of my favorite moments in Hearthstone are congratulating new friends on a game Well Played, talking about the insane part of the game that just happened, and seeing if they want a rematch, exchanging decks, etc. But it feels like most requests are only accepted a fraction of the time. I’m sure the culprit is the poor behavior of ‘new friend trolls’ (because we’ve all been on the receiving end of THAT moment, and it’s not pretty).
With this system, good natured players would be rewarded with their high reputation, opening doors to making friends quickly and easily. Over time, all the trolls would just get to be all alone, unable to make new friends - which may even motivate borderline troll-ish people to be nicer knowing they have their reputation to consider.
As a note, there would probably need to be some way to slowly erase -1’s over time; mis-clicks happen and people’s behavior can change. A really low reputation could prevent a player from ever making any new friends on their account if the -1’s were permanent…so some additional thought needs to be put into the ‘reputation’ system prior to launch. Overall, however, the idea is a good one for promoting good sportsmanship and I’m sure it would grow the community to be a more positive and engaging place.
What do y’all think? ;]
Happy Hearthing, and lookout, trolls - we’re onto you! 
AHIX in FL
