not sure how much you pay attention to big game updates but months ago, the game’s punishment system was largely changed so that people can have their accounts suspended MORE quickly than ever before. i believe instead of silence>longer silence> even longer silence> even LONGER silence>ad nauseum, it’s now silence> suspension and there is no punishment degradation either.
on top of that, more and more GMs refuse to post chat logs consistently showing toxicity and will flat out state any more tickets or emails you send on the subject will be ignored,
on top of THAT, it is now against the rules to talk about unfair/unproven silences and suspensions on both the official forum AND the sub reddit. I can understand having it against the rules on one of these platforms so that the other can have consolidated feedback about the system. However having both censored means there is nowhere official to complain about the system, meaning that the team just doesn’t care.
At this point, it almost seems like this is being done on purpose to sabotage HOTS so that the game can finally die and the devs can go on to do other games.
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but one can think and speculate and it’s hard to come up with a better theory than you have put forward.
Blizz is a company with a proven track record and obviously cares about its bottom line. I find it too hard to believe they would be so obliviously unaware of the damage the report system is doing to this game.
I fully support Blizzard’s right to use automated tools to curb toxicity, but at the same time, if the GM can’t produce any evidence of toxicity the account action should be nullified.
Upholding account actions taken by an automated system without evidence of wrongdoing is wholly unacceptable.
However, I still think that well over 99% of account actions are justified and almost every time someone makes a thread about how they were “unjustly” banned they show why they were banned in the 2nd or 3rd response. It’s that 1% that concerns me.
When you consider what can be used to justify “toxic chat”, almost any account action can be upheld. I’ve not been silenced, but I’ve seen tickets from friends who have been silenced. They were not banned for naughty words, abusive chat, but just simple lines about strategy.
Until Blizz gives a concise definition of what abusive chat is, this problem will never go away. They also need to stop shifting around rules or inventing new ones to justify reports when they can’t find evidence of toxicity.
The person banned under the “abusive chat” category for “ping spam” because he had his chat disabled, displays the lengths they will go to justify reports.
DE (digital Extremes) Makers of Warframe do this too. Companies do this because they can and their are little to no consequences for them doing it. Internet bill of rights when? Course the smarter thing to do is to remove their protection. If they want to act like a publisher then so be it. They dont get to double dip and get the protections of a public utility AND a publisher.
They are not unaware. They just dont care. What ever money they lose by doing this is small.
Plus you have to remember. PC infects and degrades everything it touches. Most PC folks dont logically care about anything other then censoring anything they dont like. Even at the expense of profit. Hence the “get woke, go broke” meme
Also add to it these companies have no oversite. They are unelected, yet get to dictate what people can and can’t do like they are some legal official or judges. I did not vote for them and as such they should not have the power to tell me what I can and can’t say on a damn public forum or really any comminatory forum for that matter. If they want administrative power of a damn judge or governmental official. Fine. They though should have to be voted for. that simple.
the problem is like i said, many times GMs will refuse to post chat logs. before the current punishment system, I always got chat logs (which is why I finally changed my behavior and went ~7 months without a single infraction). after the change, I got silenced almost immediately and when I asked for consistent evidence of toxicity (consistent being the point, it makes no sense upholding a silence on the basis of a single correct report out of dozens). What I basically got back was “oh yea we TOTALLY looked at the silence and it was justified. just trust us, also if you contact us about this silence again, we will just ignore you lol”.
It gets to a point where it’s hard to suggest that 99% of account actions are justified (at least those based around comms) when so many Game Masters just refuse to post chat logs, tell you to take their word that you were toxic, tell you that toxicity is determined by THE COMMUNITY (instead of rules) and that any further attempts to challenge the silence will be ignored.
And like I said, that is wholly unacceptable. I feel like both of the responses I got completely glossed over this part.
If you read that part you’d know I don’t support blanket punishments without evidence.
In all honesty, the silence system should behave like the forum flagging feature. A high volume of reports results in a temporary silence, but each infraction must be human reviewed in order to hard enforce the account action.
Well I hope it doesn’t function like the forums. I’ve never been silenced in game but I have here for saying “everyone has the right to be critical, as long as they are respectful”.
If someone asks for a review of his ban blizz should provide the offenses and the number of times bannable words have been uttered.
That being said every time someone complain here they always make a case of showing the system works right…