So its obvious that the player base isn’t what its used to be. I play this game on a regular basis with some friends however the amount of toxic players we encounter is way too high. Since blizzard doesn’t seem to do anything about this id like to propose a Moderator system where players whose accounts are secure (ie. authenticator, phone number etc.) and have a clean record of toxicity can sign up to be a moderator that can both mute and suspend with potential to have players banned.
What prompted this today is over the course of 7 games i played today I had 3 afkers in 3 separate games, somebody start insulting my brother in Spanish something along the lines of obesity diabetes and McDonalds were all i could catch. Either way my point is that there are people who actually enjoy playing this game and play a lot of it and then there are people like I just mentioned. The report system doesn’t seem to do much cause we still encounter these players over and over. If blizzard wont moderate the game properly then let the people who are actually passionate about the game who play it and deal with this stuff do it for free.
This would only work if the moderators were kept in check by the higher ups. Power corrupts, and while some people may pass all the checks, that does not mean they would make for good moderators. This is not just those that would abuse such a position, but those that would shy away from dolling out punishment.
Also, when you become a moderator, you may as well just unfriend everyone, because there is now a wall between you and everyone else. Not many people like that. Some people just do not have the mindest to discipline people when needed. That is not fault on their character, just a fact.
I personally went through that circus in the Borderlands Gearbox Discord, and I was not even consulted prior to my “promotion”; me and another member were having a stick measuring contest for funsies when the head honcho promoted me on the spot because they thought it was funny.
I hated every minute of it, and within a week I demoted myself.
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I have heard stories about how MVPs and community elected people gets flamed on WoW forum. You see how people talk down on them and mock them for being true Blizz drones like people have been called here.
Makes me happy we dont have that here tho I know who could fit being MVP here.
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It is not much different to being a foreman, team lead, or some other position above most people at a work place. You simply struggle or are not allowed to be friends with the “peons”, or at least that is the case in places that hold true to the order of things. Otherwise, you get favoritism and all that good stuff.
Being a moderator is NOT fun. As a practionioner of Stoicism now (I know I do not give off the discipline vibes), I MIGHT be able to do it now as opposed to when I was last a moderator some ten years ago, but I am not willing to bet on it. You need to have a dejected mindset in order to pull it off. You almost need to be a machine in order to fullfill that sort of position, and it is a catch twenty-two. If you care about the game/community, it can be much harder to crack down at times.
It is also rare to come across any sort of community where the moderators are reasonable, at least that is my experience. A good example being the Grim Dawn forums. As much as I love the game, the community is…eh. I do not exactly recommend interacting with them.
Fortunately, I was not given that much flak in the Gearbox discord, but that was mostly due to the fact I was a bit of–for lack of a better word–a ‘celeberity’ in being a Jakobs fanatic, so that was a bit of a cushion for the duration I was a moderator.
Which on the note of the celeberity nonsense, that was why I left them completely. I did not enjoy the attention I had garnerered for simply being a hard head in using probably the worst category of weapons in the franchise. Or at least second from worst. Scav/bandit was rather garbage, but that is an entirely different topic not relevant to HotS or Blizzard.
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That is fair. The player moderator system definitely has some flaws. Another option would be like what League of Legends had for many years called the Tribunal where you as a player would review reports by other players and judge the offender accordingly. During that time (I haven’t played league in many many years) but if you reported somebody and that person was punished the next time you logged in you would get a message something to the effect of “a player has been punished due to a report you submitted” that would also be a fine alternative IMO. I am just so sick of the amount of toxic players in this community because I love this game but as a loyal player I just don’t want to even queue because there is like a 50/50 chance that the games going to be wrecked by somebody for literally no reason. Then you’re bound for 10-20 minutes with that situation. Its just unpleasant.
League is experiment with a kind of social credit system soon if not already and I’m curious whether that helps their games toxicity problem.
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Interesting, I’m curious to find out how well that system works in practice. On a previous episode of the Hots forums, I made a post regarding introducing a merit system that awards good behavior in game.
As it stands, we have a mostly automated systems that many players use to report chat abuse and ping spam, (as many people think they are the only report categories that work), yet there is nothing to promote positive behavior, or a system that helps to encourage those players who have reformed their previous negative behavior.
I wouldn’t trust the players to be in charge of moderation. Too often I’ve encountered players in chat calling on others to report a player for “AFK”, simply because they didn’t like a talent that player took, or that player was performing poorly.
I’m also doubtful Blizzard would take such measures to revamp the system, as that would mean allocating more resources to setting it up, so far, all actions taken suggest (at least in the case of Hots) that Blizzard wants to spend as little time and manpower as possible and leave automation in charge.
Centuries ago, I belonged to a gaming guild, and a similar thing happened to me there. I was promoted to moderator and I hated it and quit after two weeks. Your observation that when an individual is put in this position, it sets them apart from friends or any potential friends is very true in my experience. Regardless of if you’re a “fair” or “good” moderator, it changes the dynamic between you and everyone who isn’t a moderator.
- I’m also not fond of the idea of moderation being done for free, for companies which have more than enough money to actually pay their CS workers.
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Just mute chat or find a different game. Games are full of mostly unhappy people, they can’t do much besides vent their emo. Everything in HotS is corrupt and often happens in streaks.
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Well dude the cycle of flamming (in ranked) is pretty easy to understand:
2019:- New game rules made real moderators ban you when you insult someone else (even by saying n00b) often but now they almost never punish someone for trolling
2019-2021: Medium/high elo players start to lose a several ammount of accounts for use “abusive chat” against trolls or people who only play ranked “for fun” (that means they pick whatever they want no matter what the team needs).
2022: Real moderators ingame were replaced by IA who only punish the abusive chat, making ranked old players even more toxic. (or turning them in people like me who troll-back every time someone troll us with bans).
2022-present: the more times your account is banned because you insult a troll who deserves it, the more your toxicity grow.
There would need to be some sort of incentive to get people interested in being a moderator when the company cannot be bothered to do it themselves. Especially when the player in question is risking their friendships on the forums and in the game to uphold the proverbial law.
Now for me personally, Blizzard couldn’t pay me enough, as while I absolutely adore HotS, I dislike the company, and do not share the same mindset as the head honchos calling the shots. It is one thing to enjoy the game and throwing money at it, but to becoming the proverbial executioner when someone steps out of the company’s line is a whole different matter.
This is a problem that is not just in the case of Blizzard but across the entire gaming scene as companies get caught or are doing a ton of shady nonsense that gamers simply do not tolerate. To become a moderater with these companies it is almost guaranteed requirement to sacrifice morales for the Greater Good. Anyone passionate about a game and/or enjoys interacting with the community is going to have an extremely hard time swallowing that pill.
It is the virtual equivalent of being a good police officer in a city, district, or county that has corrupt politicians.
For me personally, I enjoy just coming on here to interact with the community and enjoy the game, but beyond that…I am not gonna say. I think even writing an video game E rating of what I would like to happen would result in a little green envelope at the top of my window tomorrow along with this post disappearing.
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In one way im happy we dont got any player council or MVPs running this forum like on WoW forum. They all get flamed on and talked down on. Just because of thier green/yellow text.
And this forum is already proven time after time that people will get called toxic nicknames by trolls who got triggered that his post was flagged. Yet they dont care about the COD on a public forum owned by a private company.
If a forum MVP would start engaging with them they would just become even more toxic. Calling people nicknames and useing post count as a weak bait just to feed thier own ego is what will mostly happen.
Steam forum is like another planet compared to this forum tho. Already seen a single guy been banned 8 times for making rage bait posts or low quality satire on a sub forum.
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You could assume from my salt posts that I get mad often and that’s correct, but I’ve been 4 years without a suspension now. I can tell that the majority of players haven’t gone full snowflake yet that they can well differentiate between maliciousness and warranted frustration. I have repeatedly seen people instantly get punished for much less but only when they manage to anger their entire team, which really is an accomplishment in a group of randoms.
The same way I won’t just report basic profanity. I am much less forgiving seeing someone typing when they should be playing and by extent baiting others to join in when it is very inconvenient to be doing so.
Ruins the root concept. A forum should be argument based meritocracy and on blizzo web these are usually reserved for someone dumb enough to be performing the job of customer support or community management for no compensation.
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You’re following the rules too well, gotta work on that lol. Respect for the understanding of profanity though, it’s too difficult for most people to avoid using it as a crutch or conversely going too far and reporting it.
Attitude is reflection of maturity.
When I casually say “sololane guy is throwing” I’m pointing out the fact, not openly insulting. It may not be the most diplomatic way to start a conversation, but it is brief and points out a thing we could usually improve upon with a simple rotation, something long overdue in this case.
The subject may not always have the social intelligence or game knowledge to admit struggle however sitting in silence doesn’t do any good. A dose of frustration is reasonable because they didn’t let us know about a problem on time and no one is really able to follow three screens at the same time to do it instead.
I’d be fine with a simple f-off and would always consider the fact they may be thinking how none of us would do better in the same situation. I wouldn’t even argue about it further. Sacrificing one side while trading much better against your opponents on the opposite end is part of the game, usually part of the winning strategy as well.
But from past experience, “muted and reported” would usually land them in trouble right after the score screen. This seems to be one universal thing which many players agree with. It’s nothing short of direct refusal to work as a team.
i have no desire to be in a position of power
but if i were in one
let the tyranny of Undondory begin. good luck having an opinion. everyone will be robotic everyone will be happy and everyone will be scrutinized for affiliating with nazeeboo
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lol the game is full of low social intelligence, so pointing out someone’s perceived faults is not going to be taken well the majority of the time and amplifies the problem.
Having the patience to work through a prolonged rough patch without someone whining and then the team recovering/winning is typically the mark of a well adjusted random group. We know its the exception not the rule.
The remaining 2/3 of bad experiences is purely the fault of failed matchmaking.
I don’t really have the will or time to argue against every single player why they may be wrong, why they are overreacting in panic and have little idea of ever changing power dynamics during the match, so it is very sad to see a bandwagon of accusations against someone simply because some noob had decided to raise their voice at another one much faster.
I’m fairly comfortable playing every hero and in my ability to outplay much stronger picks with garbage characters. What do I even need to worry about if my team panics over Illidan pick in aram for example? If a noob whiner is on my team, is overreacting over a suboptimal pick because he does not understand the game, there must be at least one equally bad player on the other team to soften the blow.
See my last post in GG for specific example.
If matchmaking were more consistent there would be much less need for any kind of communication. There’s much less room for misreading the intentions and goals of your guys when you are all equally as good at the game.
When arguing with someone delusional or unreceptive of feedback, the worst thing you can do is waste your time explaining to them how and why they’re wrong in an attempt to prove how right you actually are. Instead of saying which hero or talents they should have picked, aim for the jugular and say something nasty so they go to sleep crying.
I already don’t understand why a lot of kids are Twitch moderators basically for free or for small gifts in most cases (exceptions exist). Using unpaid workforce as a billion dollar company for sure isn’t how the job should be done. The people should try to get something done with their life and Blizzard/Microsoft should pay for jobs.
There is a lot of AI hype, but what AI is actually really good with is to interpret text or stats. Most of it could be fully automated and is less complicated than running a fully fledged customer service or driving a car with AI.
In regards to people being flamed for different coloured text you they wouldnt even need to do that. They could literally just be incognito. As for people doing it for free, well Idk I like the game but cant stand the amount of people that just go to the platform at like 90 seconds into a game then walk out just enough to not get kicked. Ive also seen multiple people leave and one toxic person sit on the platform and ping the bots back home cause they want it over. Stuff like that Id love to dole out suspensions. As for basic profanity id say its up to that players discretion personally depends how its used and whats being said tbh
Well, that puts me firmly on your hit list, my your reign of terror begin!
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