The reporting system is utter trash. I was recently banned for toxic behavior for a few days but here’s the kicker - I have chat turned off. I can’t be toxic even if I wanted to. Ever.
So this proves what I’ve always suspected. That they don’t even read or verify the reports. The system simply counts the number of reports and once a certain number is reached, the ban takes place. It’s never even verified to be accurate (how could it? I was banned at 2am on a Saturday… no one is reviewing reports at 2am, especially on the weekend) .
My friend was banned last year in the same way, He vowed to return and report every player 10 times in every game until Blizzard changes their reporting system. And I get his point of view, now that it’s happened to me.
Blizz doesn’t understand that you can’t have a competitive, team-based, ranked-based game and not allow people to chat. But with your reporting system, you made it so you can’t even talk to your teammates without fear of being reported.
You need to do one of two things: Either remove chat completely, since you obviously don’t want people talking to one another, or remove the reporting system entirely. Because as it stands, it’s worthless.
There is some kind of a flaw in the system that apparently counts pings as chat. There was a person on reddit recently who got 4 silences/suspensions overturned by appeal, which had no chat at all (upon further investigation, it turned out to be pings).
(Note that the person got all these overturned)
If you play a ton of games daily in Storm League… I probably wouldn’t ping too much either.
This is mostly a problem for heavy users of Storm League. The average AI or QM player is not affected by the issue since reports in those modes are much rarer.
Blizzard caters too much towards soft people. Do like CoD did and remove abusive chat report option. You have a mute button. Trash talking is expected online and even E rated Nintendo games have a disclaimer that online interactions aren’t rated as anything can happen!
The only report options should be afk, death threat, bot/cheating, and other “sensible” options. Not abusive chat.
At least they’ve apparently started manually reviewing them, rather than instantly copy+pasting a “we can’t help you” + a link to their Code of Conduct or Terms of Use.
He provided screenshots of 4 different GM’s overturning each penalty, so there is some human intervention, though the initial penalty can be false since it activates automatically upon triggering a certain number of reports.
Your friend is no better himself when he does that. Then he just joins the groupe of many 1000 others who false report people for nothing. But since we dont know what your friend does or says in his games then him getting banned was his own fault.
That was then. You will find it very hard to appeal now. They’ve removed the feature entirely. You need to email them to do so and it’s a pain. Not that they review it anyway. They’ve explicitly stated they only reverse a ban if your account is hacked.
The only thing you can’t appeal is a permanent ban, unless your account was hacked. That requires an email. And if you’re at the point for a permanent ban, they’ve already upheld 2 or 3 suspensions from you meaning you were toxic.
The website gives the appeal option for chat related offenses. I have seen a streamer write an appeal there with my own eyes. He got booted out of a lobby, then bam, account suspended and he couldn’t log in.
No random player in the world has the ability to first get your IP, then somehow infiltrate the internet service provider in your country and get your home address (by seeing which customer that IP was assigned to during certain hours of a certain day), then travel to your home and kill you.
It’s ridiculous to even think about.
I report those players and find them deplorable, but worrying about them is ridiculous.
So that means I guess nothing should be reportable then except for game throwing. I guess you convinced me and I’ll cite you if someone says why no death threats now. And here the forum thought my mind can’t be changed. Ha
I didn’t say I condoned his actions, I just said I understood it. But what comes around goes around.
As to your last point, if you don’t know what he said or did, then you clearly can’t say the ban was his fault. I have played with him many times and he is never toxic. In fact, he’s usually quite friendly. But after the ban, he was mad because he obviously felt it was unjustified and had no recourse about it, because Blizz doesn’t give a sh1t.
Honestly, I don’t care about trash talk either and as you say, there is a mute button for that. I don’t have any idea though what audience (if any) Blizzard caters to. Reporting in games like HOTS or Overwatch seems to follow an industry trend, if it follows anything.
Well, I was just banned for 3 days and guess what? The appeal feature is gone. Not that they ever read them anyway. And no, if you’re banned 3 times it means nothing. As I clearly just proved, you can be reported for doing nothing at all and still get a ban. Three of those is not hard to acquire, and it’s not unreasonable to assume that some or most of those are unwarranted, as in my case.
You idea only benefit trolls, feeders and toxic players. I would say keep it but make it better then it is now. I agree that if people are toxic people can just mute them and then rework abuse chat into only taking account for stuff like death threats or very toxic words that ofc cant be said on this forum.
The last thing we need in this game is something that reward bad behavior and bad actions
Also have all abuse chat reports checked by a human and remove automated system since its a flawed system that punish both the right but also the wrong players that has done nothing.
i say remove it because that is the cheapest method than having humans looking over reports/reworking the report system because i know that Hots is on a skeleton crew
