Reporting players

Dear Blizzard,

Please explain to me why you guys have a report function.
I reported 2 players in my team for intentionally dying and you thought it was a good idea to put them in my team again the next round.

I swear reports does nothing in this game, Unless that player gets reported like 500 times or something (just guessing a number) Then it really has no effect.

I do agree that it is BS that you reported someone and even blocked them but yet you can still get matched with them the very next day, Hell i have even logged out and come back the next day to still be matched with the same named players…

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Playing at a low skill level is not a punishable offense. That is why such people are matched with and against low skilled players.

How can you know that they are low skill level? If you auto run into players and turrets, that is a form of feeding.

Yes but without replays or videos of the players in question one cannot assume they were doing that. It is just the topic creator’s word.

Posting such replays in the context of a thread like this might be considered naming and shaming unless the player names are edited out. This complicates things quite a bit.

I agree with you, but with that said…

The reporting system lacks any sort of feedback. In CS:GO if you report someone for griefing and they get a ban, you get a notification: “A player you reported has been punished.” So I can tell something has been done about it.

Furthermore, I get put into games with the same toxic people spouting all sorts of explicit insults and random rage-y garbage, I haven’t seen any of them with a chat muted punishment, let alone a ban.

It’s gotten to the point I have been barraged with so much of it, I’ve gotten caught up and became toxic at times, I know I was reported, deservingly so, and I have never been punished. EVER.

Me and my HOTS friends mock the “what do you think of the reporting system?” survey every time it comes up, because reporting does nothing.

If it did, 5 of us (and everyone else out there) pressing the most dissatisfied option for the survey every time for a year, would have lead to a change in the reporting system by now.

Yeh I agree that this has been a long running issue. Apparently some people claimed notifications were being sent out at some stage but it may have been a trial that happened long ago.

It takes a while to happen, and if they are silenced they get removed from SL. In the mean time I recommend silencing them if you cannot stand ruining your eyes with their messages.

Ironically about 9-12 months ago people were saying the exact opposite. The forum was filled with people complaining that they said 1 word which was taken out of context and they were silenced for it. If these claims were legitimate I do not know but there sure was a lot of them every day back then.

Sadly development on HotS has slowed since Blizzard shifted resources away. This may also be a reason behind punishments happening less frequently if they reduced the support staff.

HotS is now very small compared with huge games like CS:GO. CS:GO can afford a lot more resources towards support and player punishment.

With out having those replays and videos, Would any and all reports not be nothing more than she said he said bs?

Most are. However when you report someone in game there is some information logged with the report that is sent to Blizzard. For example recent chat messages and in game stats as well as the hero choice.

Yeah but all a player had to do is farm stats and they can still try not to win the game.

At that point of time I would say people are bordering paranoia. If they have sufficiently good stats they have contributed enough that a low skilled player would not do much better. Even if they decide to not attack the core at all, if they contributed enough the other 4 can finish.

No. No no no no no. This game is decided on objectives, team play, and pressure.

Plenty of games will end with your worst player receiving MVP, because they didn’t die, and you don’t die when you avoid every fight.

1 person refusing to teamfight on a major objective at level 22 throws the game.

If your tank decides not to tank but farm lanes instead, good luck stopping the enemy team from engaging on you when they realize you are split.

If your Malthael watches you fight 4v5, then ults for a kill after the fight is over, and runs away, you are not going to win.

A Lili with top healing, damage, and no deaths; doesn’t mean anything if it’s all self healing, in a single lane, against a bruiser like Artanis who is happy to be a distracting punching bag.

You can have a Gazlowe with amazing siege stats and XP, blocking any minons, mercs, or enemy players from damaging structures; but if he refuses to step out past a fort you are going to lose on Blackheart’s bay. All his “stats” are not going to save you from the objective cannons destroying your base.

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So does 1 person being stupid and jumping in 1v5 due to arriving 10 seconds early resulting in a 4v5 with a level disadvantage. Or everyone being stupid and running in for a 5v5 close together just to be stunned and moshed through a wall and exploded by Kael.

One cannot say that the person threw the game by being stupid. If one did then practically everyone, including yourself, could be classed as throwing games at some stage or another.

One must be tolerant to stupidity, even if a player makes a clear and obvious mistake. Insulting them for it does not help the situation, and neither does reporting them since they are not throwing. If they actively start to throw and especially if they admit to doing so, then report them.

That would not give her top healing. They changed how healing works recently.

I have to agree with zombie on this one. Most players will do many things he mentioned on purpose. They will not change how they play in order to focus on trying to win the important stages of the game, They just will do solo things they believe is right and if you say nothing, they will not change the actions they have decided on and if you speak out to them then often they are just gonna get toxic with you in chat before continuing to do whatever it is you disagreed with to begin with.

Minus brightwing, I do not believe a healer should ever be solo laning if all 5 players are up. You have a lili on team and they just go bot all game, even if your team follows them and they player keeps jumping from lane to lane in order to avoid being with the team, is that not a form of trolling?

Rehgar actually makes a highly competitive solo laner. His lightning orb is high end wave clear and he has bruiser level DPS as well. Rotating to clear lane buildup with Rehgar is a good and viable strategy, especially if no one is injured and there is no need for a team fight.

A lot of problem with supports soloing is because no one else does. Sure they could death ball as a 5 and heal you, but you will still die and lose anyway because the enemy team is 2-4 levels up on you very quickly. If you are at a level disadvantage the team has to do something to equalize and that usually means soaking. If no one else does it, the healer or support has to even if they are quite literally the worst person to be doing so.

For example in your situation with Li Li solo laneing one could have possibly solved it by split 1 1 3 with 2 helping Li Li. Even if the Li Li stubbornly sticks to her lane most of the game you would still perform better than 4 players suiciding without a support and leaving 2 lanes unsoaked.

Reporting players does nothing, They can’t afford to ban players cause they are losing too many as it is due to poor matchmaking and improper ranking.

I’m gonna preface this with three things:

  • I completely agree, not knowing and making mistakes (even “dumb” ones) is not reportable.
  • I like HOTS, I like its gameplay style more than any other MOBA.
  • Its matchmaking, reporting, and MVP systems need an overhaul, they are making players more toxic than they should be.

I’m talking about (and probably bdragon30 as well,) people who literally type out: “GG. Screw this, I’m just gonna farm till the games over.”

That is someone recognizing they need to be at the team fights, but refusing. Moving out of the enemy team’s way, and intentionally trying not to win. Deliberately throwing the game, but staying active enough to not receive an AFK’r penalty.

Some people do that from game start in ranked if they are unhappy with the team select, as dodging is worth 3 losses, but quickly throwing a game is worth 1 loss. That is reportable, yet I never see those people being pulled out of queue.

A weird angry grey area pops up when a bad player becomes belligerent, and refuses any form of team play.

Now to reiterate I think your side of the argument is correct: “Bad players refuse to listen to, or play with, their teams. But being bad isn’t reportable.” (correct me if I paraphrased that wrong.)

But I understand the anger behind: "This is such a brawl / team orientated game, that refusing to communicate or coordinate with your team (for what ever reason) is tantamount to throwing, and throwing is reportable."

Being stuck with not just an unskilled teammate, but one who refuses teamwork, communication, and on top of that is rude or hostile; is more miserable here in HOTS than any other game I’ve ever played. Because HOTS is probably one of the most team centered MOBAs I’ve come across.

You as an individual, cannot outplay the entire enemy team to the same degree as you can in other games. No hero is that strong, no power scaling that great; rubber banding and late game can decide the outcome of the game in a single kill. You succeed together, you fail together, and it is clear(for most) as to why.

The current MVP system can make it more miserable when you win.

Teams forced to fight 4v5, selling themselves dearly for nailbiting objective victories, as their tank types out hate and slowly fights a merc pack, are demoralized further when that same Tank gets MVP for not ever dying.

The worst player in the game just received a reward for screwing their team over, and the team that suffered through him, witnessed it.

Reading “See I got MVP, you are all wrong” from your most ignorant player, is enraging. We don’t want to find out bad behaviour and poor play are being positively reinforced in the players we will be matched with.

Like the author of the post, most do not want to be repeatedly forced together with players they have already clashed with.

Because of how important team play is, and how miserable a bad team dynamic is in HOTS, players are willing to wait longer in queue to avoid someone they know they will have negative interactions with.

These are the sets of frustration I see kicking around in this game.

It still does, a healer healing themselves is not counted as self healing.

Self healing is for abilities that can only heal yourself. I play a lot of Li Li, but you can always give’r a whirl to confirm my claim for yourself.

Punishment isn’t instant either so the chances you group with them right away is there.

Punishment does not happen period. You have to have a large number of reports and a player can probably go weeks if not months before a possible punishment is issued thus allowing player to continue to be toxic and throw games on purpose.

You are right, it’s only reasonable there is a delay. And there is no way to be 100% certain if they have been punished. But I do get queued with the same people over time at my Rank in Casual and Ranked. It’s not strange to see a player again and again over weeks/months, on either team.

In casual I’d expect to see them get muted over time, in ranked I’m surprised to see the same ragers and feeders every week.

I once added a particularly vocal toxic player to my friends list for a month just to see, reported him while we were in game, and he was online all month.

Hell, maybe he got punished the second after I took him of the list, I can’t know. That is why I believe we should get an anonymous notification when someone we reported is punished.

We wouldn’t know who, just that someone we reported did get punished. Kinda like how the police let you know they caught whoever committed a crime, without telling you their name.

Maybe HOTS is punishing these guys, handing out bans far more often than I realize. The problem may be that I’m a simple dumb human who is out of the loop, and being unaware of those toxic players punishments feels the same as them going unpunished.

Or it could be HOTS has a horrifically lax punishment rate, freely allowing people to rage, spout hate, and throw games in mass before being corrected. I suspect this is the truth.

As I said before, I’ve been toxic and received no punishments. I stuck a toxic jerk on my friends list and watched him rage through games for a month straight just to see, no punishments.

All signs point to the reporting system being impotent.

I mean, I guess I could go log my alt and test being horrible to the point of punishment and bring back that info as well. But that would require being horrible to people.

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