I’m EXTREMELY frustrated at the reporting system. I have been giving it a 1 star for YEARS and nothing seems to have changed! Without anyway of us knowing that our reports are reaching you or you taking action I hold Blizzard responsible for the failure of this game! It’s a GOOD game and it feels like there’s no care to your fan base about this. It’s time for you to be innovative and find a way to communicate to your players that you actually care and are listening to us!
I just finished a game where the tank decided to continuously feed within the first 5 minutes of the game because one of our DPS was irritating him. We weren’t even LOSING the game! Our tank didn’t care, laughed about it and we lost over 200 ranked points on this game. How is this fair to your gamer community?!
Yesterday I played another game where one of our members DC’d and never came back for the entire game and 2 other members kept DCing and reconnecting. We lost 200 points for that match as well. WHY?! That’s clearly an unfair game and the other two members who did not DC should not be penalized for something that is beyond our control.
What is going on Blizzard?! Is there not enough staff to review these reports? Are our reports not detailed enough for you to review the footage in a timely manner? Is it not cost effective for your business? What is wrong?
Suggestions:
Come up with some way on battle.net for us to check the status of the reports we’ve made so we can visually see that you’re doing something. There is no way for us to know if we’re just wasting our time with these reports and no one is reviewing them. We need to see you having accountability and it needs to be traceable. I want to see what the status of my report is.
- Pending
- Under Review
- Action/No Action Taken.
- What action was taken OR why no action was taken.
It’s not like I need action to be taken IMMEDIATELY, but I would like to know that eventually something is being done. Now #4 is VERY important to me. If action was taken, I would like to know what.
The more serious reports ie Abusive Text, Abusive Chat, Intentionally Dying, Cheating/Botting/Hacking I would suggest:
- Give a warning for first offense. Explain the community standards and inform them that their account and IP address will be monitored at a higher priority for the next…I don’t know…let’s say 3 months.
- Next would be a 3 day suspension for 2nd offense within a calendar year.
- Week suspension for a 3rd offense within a calendar year.
- Month suspension for a 4th offense within a calendar year.
- 6 month suspension for a 5th offense within a calendar year.
For the less serious reports ie DCing, Inappropriate Name, Spam can be handled differently.
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DCing is tricky. You don’t know if it’s intentional or unintentional. If it’s verified that it was intentional for instance there was text saying “screw you guys I’m out” or it was recorded on voice chat, I would consider that to be in line with the more serious offenses. If there is no way to verify that it was intentional then you can go through a similar process to what you have in place already. I believe it is play and complete 2 or 3 QM or AI matches. I think that’s fair. However, I think it’s important that people who are DCing should be tracked to see if they’re in a group with another person as a way of exploiting a way to raise someone else’s rank. If it is indeed being done, then a ban for the rest of the season and their points should be reduced by the appropriate amount for the player they’re helping. Or they can just have no points for the season.
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Inappropriate name should be checked to see if it meets Blizzard’s guidelines. If it does not, account is frozen until they change their name.
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Spam I think is easy to handle. I don’t necessarily think that this needs Blizzard assistance, the mute option works just fine. However if they’re advertising things or websites that don’t adhere to guidelines then I suppose banning the account would be necessary.
The fact of the matter is, Blizzard is known for having a very TOXIC community and honestly, it is YOUR fault this has happened. It’s RIDICULOUS that this isn’t a priority for your company. Happy gamers translates to MORE gamers and more gamers translates to you making more MONEY! Yes, it’s ridiculous that you have to babysit people that are hurting your community, BUT you have to do it if you want to have continued success.
As for people who report other players, there needs to be accountability with them as well. I know there’s a lot of people who scream during chat “report this player! They’re a noob!” or “Look at their talent choices! Report them!”. That’s ridiculous. That doesn’t qualify as a report. And if people are making bogus reports, you can “warn” them that it doesn’t meet the criteria for reporting. If they make continuous bogus reports then they should LOSE their reporting privileges for X amount of time. I’ll leave that up to you to determine. That should help your staff with their time management to address reports that match the criteria. Better yet, to add to that, you can add another layer of “priority report reviews” for gamers in the community that CONSISTENTLY make good reports that match the criteria helping your community! Those players that always make accurate reports within the guidelines, should have their reports prioritized over other players because they’ve already established a basis of trust and responsibility. However, if at anytime they make a bogus report, they will then lose their priority and will have to earn it back by making consistent good reports again.
It should also be added as a reminder to your reporting system for players to make note of the time in game so it can be reviewed more quickly. I’m sure there’s nothing more irritating then going through a 25 minute game, trying to find out WHERE the complaint is. If they provide a time on the game of when the instance occurred, that could have a higher priority as the people who review the reports (if they even exist at all) will be able to take action on it faster.
I seriously HOPE that this is read, by a member of Blizzard. I have been a faithful customer since WC3…18 years. I don’t want to be one of those “people” that tells you that you’re going to lose my business forever, but honestly…it’s things like these that make it really hard to want to continue to play. I love the games you create, hell, I even by the books because I like to learn the lore, but I find it increasingly difficult to want to support a business that doesn’t care about me.