Blizzard’s reporting system unfairly penalizes frustrated players while allowing game ruiners to thrive, and YES I got banned.
The system’s reliance on player reports makes it susceptible to abuse, and it fails to distinguish between genuine frustration and intentional sabotage.
This creates an unfair environment where passionate players are punished while game ruiners go unpunished.
Blizzard should implement a more robust appeals process, improve transparency, and develop better tools to detect malicious reports.
In conclusion, Blizzard’s reporting system is unfair and discriminatory.
Additionally, they should educate players about the negative impact of game-ruining behavior and encourage reporting of these behaviors. By addressing these issues, Blizzard can create a more positive and inclusive gaming community for all players.
I agree with most of this, but considering Hots neglected state, it’s doubtful the Blizz will allocate any money to employ humans to manually review reports, or more diligently review account actions.
Even before Hots was “retired”, the only changes made to the report system were more automation, and the implication of less forgiving polices. The system was changed from silences (increased lengths per account action) and suspensions, to a 3 strike and banned policy.
These statements are extremely sus. Many times people are extremely toxic but justify this by saying they are passionate and frustrated because of trolls and griefers.
So in summation: You got pissed off. Used chat to curse out your teammates. You kept doing this till you got banned.
Thing is: You can’t retaliate in kind, because you put yourself in the same boat as them. Using chat only shows proof of your transgressions. Yes, it’s not nice to curse people out even if they deserve it (HERE IN BLIZZARD PROPERTY). While the trolls and griefers have more leniency because you can’t prove they are actually trolling, or just poor players.
Too many times I have heard players try and justify them being jerks to people.
I got banned once because everyone reported me for taking ZJ in aram instead of the only healer, they all reported me for ‘Abusive Text Chat’ even though i turned off my text chat, we won that game aswell which makes it even weirder.
it’s frustrating, but if you go solo i strongly advise you to not engage in chat with anyone… no matter how wrong they are, it only makes you tilted and not have fun while playing.
I think people worried about getting abusive chat reports should practice their right to remain silent.
Blizzard’s system is flawed due to people getting reported unjustly, like for simply utilizing the chat feature. There have been countless times for me where I’ve witnessed myself or others have their teammates report them for playing badly. And those reports against me actually counted against me because I’ve gotten silenced/suspended even though all I’ve said is things like “gg” or had some friendly conversations. Make a misplay, get reported for it, and have happened to use the chat (saying absolutely whatever)… you’re subject to those reports because they’re automated.
You shouldn’t be punished for using a feature in the game unless you’re actually abusing it. It just makes people not want to use the chat anymore and then there goes the communication aspect of the game.
I have stopped using the chat for this reason and its sad I even have to.
Yes, I received a ban. However, since my last ban, I have refrained from using any curses, swearing, or other offensive language, and I have made a concerted effort not to insult anyone. My primary focus was to encourage teammates to focus on objectives and support each other.
I also filed a complaint, but the support did not provide any evidence of inappropriate language or conduct in their response. As evidenced by other players’ comments, the reporting system seems to be biased towards banning players based solely on the number of reports received, rather than examining actual chat logs or behavior.
I have also witnessed instances where players were banned solely on the basis of reports, with the only evidence provided being the word “loser.” This is clearly unfair and undermines the integrity of the reporting system.
That’s the only evidence they gave. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t more. The customer service reps are just lazy and probably just searched the last game you were reported and skimmed through the chat. If they took the time to do it for each of the 20+ reports they got, they could probably provide more. It would also make their job X times longer.
The fact that you got banned which requires two additional prior actions on your account, each requiring their own batch of other reports before you got punished, leads me to have almost zero sympathy for you. By the time your account gets actioned on, it is almost INEVITABLE that there will be false reports. But that’s really a smoke screen. The reporting system isn’t there so you can have 20+ opportunities to be mean before you get punished, it’s more of a if you’ve had 20+ reports, and you don’t think one or a handful of them don’t show you being abusive, you’re being kind of delusional.
Ultimately, the system is subjective, nontransparent, and with a free to play game, not as big of a deterrent that it could be. However, it’s also EXTREMELY lenient because of the sheer amount of reports you need if you just have even a teensy bit of restraint.
A ‘conclusion’ is demonstrated by providing reasoning and evidence, not simply dropping a couple of internet buzz-words and demanding social justice for an inconvenience.
Most things are “unfair” because people don’t share the same values and expectations; some people are high, wasted, drunk, angry, sadistic, masochistic – etc etc – in ways any matchmaker cannot ascertain, so the expectations of “fair” games is simply misguided. A lot of people simply aren’t playing the same thing as others, and some simple aren’t aware enough to realize that.
While many systems trying to ‘reward’ desirable behavior to encourage more of the same and ‘punish’ unwanted behavior to thus discourage it, people similarly do not share the same values of reward/punishment and there isn’t some universal algorithm to affect that or some sort of ‘common sense’ shared by divergent groups.
While aspects of the system can be improved, most of the populace concerns are dealing with ignorances that a game simply isn’t going to address, regardless if people know what is ‘discrimination’ or not.
The game could do more to educate players on how to learn to enjoy what experiences it provides and facilitate more teamwork, but it’s also mired in a genre largely influenced by prior expectations and superstition.
The sort of people that go around into fantastic virtual worlds generally aren’t the sort hitting up Mavis Bacon or MECC for establishing polity and honor.
I will take you at your word that you learned a lesson from your past suspensions and amended your behavior in chat accordingly.
The problem is, even “sarcasm”, is an offense that can land you an account action under abusive chat. Just asking people to swap lanes or go to an objective can be punished under “telling others how to play.”
Speaking of sarcasm, I recently said “WP”, to a Sylvanas who managed to snipe 2 enemies under their fort. A couple of seconds after I typed that, the Syl died, and she assumed I was being sarcastic and reported me.
When it comes to those two rules, none is supposition on my part, I’ve never been silenced, but I had friends who were. This was back when they still had GM to review reports and cite chat lines and provide information on the rules that were broken in tickets. Those rules above, are just two examples of the very broad definition of what constitutes “abusive chat”, in this game.
The rules are deliberately broad, this isn’t necessarily for nefarious reasons, if people knew the exact rules, they would find methods to skirt them. However, IMO, the rules are too vague for an automated system and the lack of repercussions to those who false report, compound the problem further.
As I said to you above, the last time they overhauled the report system, they only made punishments more severe and less forgiving, and I really don’t see them investing time or manpower to overhaul the system that’s in place for a retired title.
Personally, I preferred the old system, where chat silences would increase in length for each offense. To me, this is a fair trade-off with a system that is mostly fully automated, where false reports are not punished, or even examined.
Ok. So I take it you ping spam. Cause that also falls under chat violations that can be reported for.
Chat logs are monitored, by bots. A human may step in if a ticket is made asking to delve further into the punishment. With mixed results. But again, this is most likely because you ping spam. Which if you don’t know, is annoying, regardless of your intentions.
Saying anything in chat can get reported and you punished. So don’t use chat, nor pings. This is the bias you’re looking for.
Can’t be monitored.
Yup. Cause calling people names is a no no. You also don’t get banned after one game. You work up to it. With warning emails and such. If those are ignored, it just builds to a full ban. I hear you actually have to be persistently toxic to receive reports to get banned, and that still takes a while.
There are plenty of people with their original accounts still in good standing, from years ago.
There are actually groups of players who stream snipe people on twitch, force that player to lose, then mass report them and get them banned for nothing. This has been going on for years.
There are tiktoks of live murders and modern lynch mobs. What a way to grow humanity
Free will exists; the select actions of people choosing to destroy and abuse always exceeds the capacity for people to “report it” and prevent/punish the offenders.
Here’s 2 in a row of the same 7 people getting onto both teams, throwing, and mass reporting us. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2027802379
My duo partner got suspended for other people cheating and other people afking. I got suspended 2 games later, both of which were wins where I said nothing in chat.
They have been doing this for over a year. They target people on twitch all the time, afk/feed if they get on the streamer’s team, or taunt+hostage if they’re on the other team.
Ok. I’m not saying there aren’t griefers and such in HOTS. They’re plenty. I only watched the ends of matches to see what you were talking about (The mass reporting).
Both videos didn’t show you getting mass reported, since there is no way for you to know if someone reports you, even if they do tell you. But since you typed in chat, you could get punished from them reporting you.
There are players who do target streamers to ruin their stream. I doubt they even knew you were streaming. You only have 3 followers. HOTS doesn’t even register as a game to even stream… Shig and Fan has like 150 viewers a piece.
You got matched up with them twice in a row, because the moment you got out of your game, you insta-queued for a new match, as they did. The most likeliest scenario would be to get matched up with the same players. While parties only max out to 5 per team, you also recruited the same ones on yours because of this.
Both times, you spoke saying they should off themselves. Your 20 minutes is worth more than all of them combined. Classic speech for people who are easily angered and toxic.
Saying that your ETC is the best in the world is, silly. Saying that it’s impossible for someone to kill you without cheating is also silly. This fake bravado or actual ego would register as someone who is toxic.
Since you’re playing on a smurf account, you should already be aware how bad things are. UNLESS you’ve already been banned and this is a new account.
You’re in Silver, if you are GM like you seem to assert, you will climb out of the low ranks fairly quickly and this sort of stuff will naturally diminish.
Yes, they could’ve been using a maphack, which sucks, and you should stop playing the game. Why? Because participating in a game with cheaters means nothing. It’s a waste of your time.
Perhaps they were a bunch of smurfs noobstomping to build their own egos.
I cannot touch on how punishments work with a player on your team that is cheating. But I highly doubt someone is cheating and somehow your partner gets punished.
You getting mass reported and getting punished is false. Instead of repeating myself, you should just read what I wrote to Bloodblade, as it applies to you.
A lot of things don’t add up. High ranked players already know how the community is and how they are spread. So complaining about it is pretty much moot. Did you really think a match in sliver will be a good match?
Match manipulation? I think not. I’m sure people here will ask you, where your server is, what time, and day you play. They will most likely tell you that, you were matched up with the same players because you’re playing late on a low population server. The insta-queue only worsened the situation. This has happened to multitudes of players.
In all seriousness I agree with OP. Someone from Blizz reviewing or a peer review system (I suggested this years ago and was massively shot down) would be great IMO.
The tenancy for the game to ban more based on using a “bad word” versus someone ruining 9 other peoples game is astonishing to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I dislike toxicity and don’t think it should happen.
I do know I can come across as toxic. I live in Australia, work in a “banter-filled” area and swearing is part of normal lingo. So to me on here I am very tame, normally it’s only when provoked I get what I would call toxic but I am happy to admit that I am but even then I know not to use “bad words”.
I’m normally on voice with my friends, luckily we know what each other are like and they’re worse to start with but they are probably getting sick of me saying “I’m trying really hard to hold my tongue and not write something” because once I do go off, I go hard.
We were discussing this the other day and I remember saying, I’d never have a go at someone for being bad if they are trying but if they a t to the rolling yup, I’d definitely want to say something. Though I will admit, it’s probably hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Yes I have been silenced before. I said someone was “Slow” while also using an intensifier, starting with f, often applying more to the whole utterance than to the specific word it grammatically modifies. This was years ago and it took me about 7 tickets before I finally got a non AI answer (by which time the silence was over) telling me it was those words that were the problem (likely the straw that broke the camels back).
I agree but it is extremely difficult to quickly judge a player whether they are bad or trolling. They would have to investigate deeply and analyze the player to make the right judgement call.
I would agree with those saying it would not work, because of how resource intensive it is. There are thousands of players and probably just as many trolls and weak players scattered in all ranks. Is it really worth reporting at such low ranks? It is probably better to report those at higher ranks where the stakes are high.
Free accounts don’t help the situation, and clouds the information even more.
Naughty words are much easier to track thus how common the punishments are for the use of them.
EDIT: The idea that comes to mind is to have hidden thresholds where not met, put the player at risk of being kicked from the game and replaced with a Bot. No warnings are shown, just straight kicked out of the match. There is no returning and are awarded a loss in their records.
For example: A hero tagged as a healer should do X amount of Damage / Healing depending on other factors like damage taken and healed compared to what happened to all the other heroes in the match.
There can be a sort of meter that keeps increasing as time passes and the play needs to be above that meter to stay in the match.
Of course this is all balanced for each rank. Where new players could have no limit, and bronze has a higher limit, silver even higher, and so on.
If a player stays at base, they can only do so if enemy players are near enough to attack them. Same with anywhere else on the map. Standing still or moving a little to beat the movement timer will have it’s own set of rules of engagement. Dealing no damage dealt / taken or healing / healed when creeps or other heroes are near by.
Just moving about the map but accomplishing nothing puts the player at risk of being kicked.
These are just some ideas popping into my head.
Yeah I agree and understand why they went the path they did
I’ve thought about something similar but more closer to if a player gets reported for AFK instead of the AFK prompt coming up after like 3 minute it comes up instantly.
If they start moving and playing but all players report again they get kicked out and you’re given a bot aka a vote kick system. I would then have the result still be recorded as is to try to prevent abuse, though the more vote kicks the more likely for that player to be suspended
I really like your idea as well BUT an issue I can see is one that plagues this game already… SMURFS. My guess is they these same people would just make new accounts specifically to not get kicked. If they got the smurf issue fixed (IE make people use a phone number etc) then it would be amazing.
Would have to be perfected but would be great to see. Like I had a game with LEO the other day where I died way more than anyone else but all my deaths normally lead to a taken objective while they tried to 1 v 5 me or I died but my team wiped em.
The game kind of has a built in system like this in reverse, but I haven’t seen it in a while: “you did more than average damage for your level” or something like that you used to see after QM matches. All they would need to do is reverse it
A bit off topic. but in Australia I noticed most of our lower ranks have gone to NA servers (It’s always funny running into an old Aus players).
My guess is the obvious variety but more the smurfs and toxicity (as I said I’m happy to own up to my part on this).
If this sort of issue doesn’t get fixed it will only get worse and eventually you will see the same on NA and EU servers but then where do people go? To another game unfortunately
