Don’t bother arguing, there will always be enough people who will tell you that the punishment is deserved even if they have zero evidence for it, neither do they know the criteria applied (nobody but blizz does), but hey … word fanboy didn’t come out of nothing.
I remember the whole thing during beta when blizz banned a bunch of people with Xonar audio codecs (which triggered anticheat), who then rushed to reddit and the forums with complaints and were met with a force of fanboys telling them to leave. It’s kinda funny, because given the number of complaints (it wasn’t the first cheater banwave) it was clear that something was wrong, but fanboys don’t see logic. Of course 2-3 days later blizz found the issue and reversed the bans, but it kinda showed how dumb and unjustified hate can be when coming from the people who claim to support the peaceful environment.
This has always been one of my complaints about the current system, false reporting is not punished. While it is against the rules, I’ve never seen a single post here or on the old forums from someone claiming to be punished for abusing the report system.
Yes it would seem reports are based on volume. I wouldn’t be too concerned about the lack of human review of your ticket as I had a friend who did get a human to review his ticket. Not only did they use out of context quotes, edit lines to sound like insults, but even quoted compliments my friend gave to players claiming them to be insults.
Unless you’re a major streamer or find a GM with an open mind they won’t overturn an account action.
This could just be confirmation bias, but I do think now the threshold for getting reported is higher than it was when they first brought in the ban bot around 2017. I hardly see a silenced player in QM anymore and none of my more vocal competitive friends in Masters or Diamond have been hit by a silence. It could in part be because less people are playing, or playing less frequently.
This is a long standing complaint in all modes, it’s probably too late to address it now with the game in decline. I agree it creates ill will between players, especially the buddy mentor system enabled in QM. The idea there is a more experienced player can give advice to someone new. However someone can report you for this advice under the rules, even if you said nothing at all inflammatory or abusive under “telling someone how to play”. I know that rule exists as this rule was cited on my friends ticket as “abuse” when he explained to a Valla on BOE that Q build was better than AA build for killing the Immortal.
They changed it to 3 silences and your account is banned. That was around 2017, I’m not sure if it’s still set as such, but it seems you’re correct that they don’t reset this limit.
I would love to see this idea implemented. Over the years many people have suggested different ways you could approach it. I still think you need a punishment system, just because this is a computer game doesn’t give people free license to abuse other folks.
A good will system that encourages various kinds of positive behavior might perhaps encourage those to change their behavior for the better.
I think even tweaking it to limited max suspensions would be sufficient. Just make it a 30-day max or something and make it more sensitive for the first week out of suspension. It would be just as effective filtering out obvious trolls/abusers, but people won’t lose their accounts where they potentially invested thousands of dollars.
Exactly. Your entire post is well said. Thanks for contributing.
None of us know (for good reason) how many reports or what time frame is required to get punished. Of course Blizz does not give us precise details on this as people would just abuse the system. So it’s all speculation on our parts.
I love this idea! I’d just happy at this point to have all 10 players on the MVP screen as I love voting for good teammates.
This idea would be even better, you could vote people as “positive shot callers” or “fighter” someone who never gives up, etc…
A great way to take a system that exists and put it to better use outside of brownie points
But you’re still here too
The numbers are arbitrary, but the point is you need a lot of reports in a short time frame. People don’t get banned just for slowly accruing unfair reports over the course of months.
I’m playing HotS for more than 5 years with an average of 3 games/day (sometimes only 1, sometimes I play more than 8) and I was never punished.
Sometimes I even got threatened with report-bots.
So I’m always really skeptic about these threads, since I never faced anyone who is innocent and truly a victim.
False reporting is hard to prove?
Ppl can be genuinely wrong and oversensitive.
Like if you report someone but the system/Blizz doesn’t think it’s valid you should get banned?
What would be considered false reporting? The only tjing I can think of is when someone says it right that they will report you for things you didn’t do just so you end up banned.
Sifting through any claim like this is always a challenge, particularly because we only have the story from one side, and Blizzard will never make their supporting evidence public. But you’re not setting off red flags for me to doubt you, and I think ultimately, you’re making some important points.
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The reporting system is a dumpster fire. It’s a black box. No one knows how it works and that’s by design. When we’re asked to evaluate it in the in-game survey, I can’t answer. I have no idea how it works and I’ve never seen it work. I’ve played since beta.
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If it is an automated system, that is a huge flaw. Any case that results in a ban, whether temporary or permanent must be reviewed by a human. While HotS is free to play, the skins aren’t, and most of us have at least chipped in a little over the years. To deny people access to something they paid for based only on an automated system seems wrong. They should have the courtesy to have a human evaluate your situation and adjudicate the ban.
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No forgiveness is also a huge flaw. We all make mistakes. It is a fundamental principle of American justice that once you have paid your debt to society, you should receive a clean slate to start over. If indeed, it has been 2 years since your last offense, taking a final step to permanently ban your account seems like excessive punishment, unless whatever you did was particularly egregious. If the 2 years’ good behavior is true, I strongly suspect you did not do anything that extreme - and that is an injustice. There should be a mechanism for you to clear your name and slowly lower your penalty status over time with continued good behavior.
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As others have said, a good will system would be a welcome addition to the game. The games that keep me playing are close and well fought by all team members. A simple “wp all” at the end is not sufficient, and it would be nice to reward them - and to deliberately not reward awful teammates. Even in losing games where we had AFKs, toxic people throwing, often there is at least one player who’s trying to do it right and still deserves credit for their play. With the forums, Blizzard removed all down votes “to avoid toxicity,” yet in game, they have no system to give up votes at all, while the reporting system is effectively a down vote only system.
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The MM system is indeed flawed. It has critical errors. I don’t play ranked, but I see the same issues you raise in QM, along with an additional QM-specific set. I think the developers gave up on it years ago, and that is a travesty. Forcing you into games with people either far above your skill level or far below is a travesty that only sets you up to either get farmed for easy kills by more skilled players, or watch your less skilled teammates continually mess up and get defensive if you try to guide them, no matter how gently. Having taught in various capacities for 2 decades, I know how to educate if a student is willing to learn. The MM should not be forcing this social situation on players. Exactly how to fix it would have to be discussed in a separate, and longer post.
Regardless, I hope you take a break and find something else to fill your time. You may find something else much more fulfilling that throwing your head at a video game that the developers have long stopped paying attention to the same way you do.
Thats speculation still… You have as much of an idea about how people get banned as i do, and you can say with any gurentee that bans happen or dont happen for achieving a number of reports in any time frame. In fact, i dont think there is any difference in a “fair” or “unfair” report, or that they make any distinction between the two since the banning is done by a bot
I spent most of the week prior to my ban on a smurf, so i definitely didnt rack up a bunch of reports on my main account.
Blizzard way of handling reports and breaking rules is the worst in the entire industry.
It used to be good. Now they prefer to use bots and save money.
Man, this post really hit me in the feels too. I’m in a similar position:
- Garbage matchmaking.
- Mass games, because its an addictive and fun game when its fun.
- A little salty in ranked, but mostly just constructive criticism, because i expect people to give a crap in ranked.
- Rack up silences, most often for really dumb stuff like maining gazlowe or asking people to not feed 4v1.
- Get saltier and meaner because terrible matchmaking + multiple silences, and many many force-losses away from hard earned ranks just makes you feel less and less in control.
- MONTHS without any account action, and then BAM, 2000+ levels, most of the games content gone, hundreds of dollars spent, and years of blizzard loyalty down the tube.
This is the only game i get salty, and become a negative or mean spirited person. I dont want to sound like that person who doesnt take responsibility, but this isn’t just a “me” problem.
Now i have a new account, and its the same old garbage matchmaking, grinding, toxic trolls every other match, or 30% win rate mis-placed players to carry, and am i having a better experience?
Not remotely. Now I know that nothing matters.
Nothing i do matters.
Nothing i say matters.
Nothing i report matters.
No amount of “self-improvement” matters.
So did the ban make me a better person?
No, im even more toxic, because literally nothing matters.
Its depressing. I wish i could just quit this game. It had so much potential.
Well. Blizzard silently ignores this. Even Grubby got banned for 24h live on stream and only his internal contacts could have saved this and the next days stream.
But hey Tracer has a new skin now. Buy it and play.
So in this dark thread, a ray of hope. While HOTS makes me miserable and questions whether humanity will truly make it, a list of positives:
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I renewed WoW subcription out of the blue after 4 years, partially out of curiosity and partially to show my GF a game she might like.
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I’m immediately reminded of the wonder, curiousity, excitement a good game can bring.
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Already making new friends, reconnecting with old ones, and feeling good to log on to a game again.
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Gaming is good. I think maybe theres just something about shoddy matching and the MOBA genre in general that might be rotten.
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I miss WoW. Great game. Fun, engrossing, doesnt make me hate myself or others to keep logging in.
This would depend on a few factors, such as what kind of report it is. I’ve seen many people say in chat “report this person for Abusive Chat, because reports for AFK/Intentionally dying don’t count”. I would say that counts as a false report.
I’ve also seen others calling upon people to “report X player for feeding or AFK” when really that player was just new and didn’t understand what they were doing. That’s less malicious, but still false.
Chat is far more difficult I will agree with you.
This is true, but you can be punished for someone being oversensitive and reporting you, the person doing this isn’t held to any account. You can probably guess from my forum posts that I don’t like drama, so when teams start to get in fights I usually mute team chat so as not to get involved.
Even so, I’ve been “reported” falsely before. For example I’ve stopped giving compliments in random teams as people often think it’s sarcasm and report it.
If forum rules here didn’t prevent me from showing my friends series of tickets I would post them. I once thought people who were silenced must have deserved it until I saw his tickets. Nothing cited from the GM’s was anything a reasonable person would consider abusive.
Just as a matter of curiosity, have any ANZ players received silences/bans?
The reason I ask is that verbally abusing each other IS part of our culture 
I’ve had people say “Don’t be a Sea-unt” in game, and probably dropped similar lines. Never had a silence for it though.
Edit: If anyone at all is uncomfortable with the insinuation of that word, just let me know and I’ll remove it…
Let’s see you prove that with some solid, undeniable proof(s).
However well behaved you were in the past, it serves not as acceptable reason to nullify your wrong doing in the present or the future. The solution? Don’t be toxic in the beginning.
Well, whatever the pairing was, it’s only 5 of you vs 5 of them. The team with better skill wins. It’s that simple. Anyone can not accept that fact can just cozy up in the vs AI.
Also, how do one suppose to improve themself without facing off against those that are better than them?
It’s common knowledge that with every subsequence violation, the penalty would get more severe. Denying what one has done in the past is purely irresponsible.
Doubt that those were all rainbows and sunshine, without all kind of blaming and flaming being mixed in.
OK then put a warning system in like:
“Hey man, i realize our matchmaking is super heated plasma trash, but you’re one report away from a perma ban of losing 500+ hours on that account, so maybe just leave chat off forever and only play vs. AI from now on, k?”
Overhaul it how exactly?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending Blizz here, quite the contrary. But their current situation is thanks to report system being 99.9% automated. They just don’t want to spend any money on it. And on the game in general.
In the ideal world we would have strict punishments for players who afk, disconnect frequently, feed or troll. That in turn would remove the need for abusive chat. Toxic chat is a direct result of people feeling extremely helpless and frustrated.
It’s like another kid getting into your sandbox with a sole purpose of peeing on your sand castle. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t know any better - what matters is 0 action being taken by authorities who promised you a good playing environment.
NONE.
So of course kids on your playground start fighting, and the despicable thing here is that the initial harrasser/feeder/afker/troll gets to not only walk completely free, but pose as a victim too!
Blizzard is directly facilitating toxicity and frustration, and they only punish for it.