Anyone notice how useless the dev work was to curb toxic behavior?

General Discussion
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They made all these changes, one being endorsements. Modifications to the reporting system, and a plea to the community.

Nothing changed at all.

I believe the reason nothing changed is because they focused on the wrong thing. You have to focus on what people get angry for. Bad match making, cheating, throwers, leavers, smurfs, terrible balance, etc.

They ignored ALL of that, and worked on junk that has zero impact (said the community the day it was released…). Oh well, I guess I must be smarter than normal or something because it seems very clear why it wouldn’t work…

Sigh

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This is not necessarily true. The overall number of reports of disruptive behavior submitted have reduced since the introduction of the endorsement feature.

According to a presentation from the Fair Play alliance, a small minority of players (as little as 1% for any given gaming community) are consistently disruptive. The reality is a high majority of all players (including myself) have been at some point disruptive in at least one match of the game they play.

I encourage you to take the time to watch this video which explains more common myths about disruptive play in online competitive games.

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In other words, things that are 100% on the fault of the players who do these things.

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Do they keep recordings of voice chat to use to decide disciplinary actions?

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keep where lol? those audio files would be huge, or quite possibly illegal…

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endorsement do nothing, right? rest is just automatic, they fired 800 customer service people, so its even less humans to actually see reports, if any ever did…

7

Actually, toxicity is only curbed by making people both realize they bear blame and then feel regret.

So far, for League of Legends, DOTA, Rocket League, Rainbow Six, and Counter-Strike, all have seen successful reductions in particularly toxic behavior by making people feel bad about using toxic language, feel partly responsible for their loss, or having quick, decisive, cumulative punishments that make them regret being banned.

They all used psychology in their tools for fixing behavior. Much like positive reinforcement, but cringe instead of encouragement.

Overwatch hasn’t done this. Language goes mostly unpunished, and the punishment is incredibly lax. When people lose, they’re blameless and look for a scapegoat and don’t believe they did anything wrong in their gameplay. And bans happen in waves/smurf accounts are so cheap/the notices that someone got punished are few and far between that there is no regret or remorse.

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Terrible balance is the fault of the players?

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A lot of the rebalancing that goes on in the game has been done in response to player complaints towards the state of game before the changes, so yeah.

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Maybe but it doesn’t really show. Earlier I had a match with 2 fresh new accounts grouped up and both of them spewing homophobic remarks about said group of people. Yeah yeah I reported but they likely are on new accounts to do that or their old ones are banned or a really long silence.

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Part of the problem with this list is that people have different definitions of what some of those terms mean.

Some think disagreeing with character selection is throwing. Some don’t think smurfing should even be considered a problem. And balance is a super subjective concept that we’re never going to come to a consensus on.

I’m not knocking the general argument you’ve made, but I think there are some things that the devs can’t do much about due to the subjective nature on some things.

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My main account got banned for toxicity, well i’ve changed.

But still something is happening against those filthy people :slight_smile:

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Recently? I have not seen an action taken message in so long.

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Well…

It got banned in August.

I mean, it all depends on how bad the toxicity is.
Because you tend to get alot of warnings, mutes and suspensions before full account closure.

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Is posting Star Wars spoilers in chat bannable?

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This thing right here is just a “WeLl AckChUaLLyY” post.

As for myself, “statistics” do not apply at all. Toxicity is at its peak right now. It’s much worse than 3 years ago when I started playing.

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sorry to break it to you and be that guy, you’re very naive if you think they check your chat/voice logs to begin with.

It’s really number of reports, and then likely an automated system checking if you said a bad word (including less suspicious ones such as “heck” or “ball you’re inting” or “hardstuck”) and then the ban is automated.

If you appeal, you get an automated message, “we found evidence and won’t uplift the ban” and yatta yatta.

Sometimes they give you a line of something you said that was (allegedly) toxic but that’s the exception to the rule really.

One time, the line that got my number of reports (I talk a lot) over the edge and got me banned was literally “gg ez”, imagine that.

uhm.

Bad matchmaking (idk what this means, in my view the algorithm that matches players itself is OK BUT there needs to be a hard reset) → Blizzard’s fault

Cheaters → Blizzard’s fault (in other more competitive games they install what is essentially a spyware on your PC so that you don’t cheat, don’t like it don’t play it)

Throwers → kinda Blizzard’s fault, you need to throw A LOT of games before you get punished, also the game is so teamplay oriented that lacking 1 teammate 100% ensures a loss and saltiness for 5 other people… in other words, a troll’s paradise.

Leavers → this is kinda the players’ fault yeah

Smurfs → Blizzard’s fault not last due to a very grindy ladder system. Most top 500 players have 5+ account (often 10+) and 3-4 of them are placed in top 500 with different phone numbers. The system sucks out all air from people trying to build a name and reputation. In other games, incidentally, like CSGO, smurfs are 100% not a problem because yes they ruin a few games but you can hard carry in that game while in this game you can’t. Also smurfs often 3-4 stack and pick all meta heroes and good luck convincing 4 solo queue idiots in your team that to beat 4 stack of smurfs you need a meta comp.

Terrible balance → this is the most crucial for me and it’s also 100% Blizzard’s fault. Who would have thought that by making the most boring and physically unappealing tank in the game super meta and overpowered, AND KEEPING IT THAT way would breed toxicity when people argue pre-match over who if anyone will go to “Orisa jail”.

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No, not really.
Altough it’s really mean.

(If you do get suspended or banned, you can always open a ticket and ask for a few examples they’ve logged)

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they generally respond with something like “while we can’t provide evidence, rest assured that there was enough to warrant the ban” etc. etc.

I’ve also not heard of 1 single case of them uplifting the ban, though I don’t actively investigate the matter so I’m sure there’s like 5 exceptions worldwide.

Sometimes, I got a GM to respond to me and not give me the automated message and he said something like “you should worry about how your words are perceived and in your case the ban was warranted” (after typing quite mild stuff like “gg ez” or “hardstuck”).

tl;dr: for Blizzard typing in chat or any form of communication is toxic if you get enough reports. What matters is number of reports, you could type smiley faces, you could say “I’ll send everyone a Christmas present”, if you get enough reports you were toxic according to Blizzard.

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Who even cares at this point. The word has stagnated so much over the years.
Remember when calling someone toxic meant something? Neither do i.
It’s used so commonly, even during the slightest inconviniences. I’ve been called toxic for saying that i don’t want to play Orisa. I’ve been called toxic for not using my mic. I’ve been called toxic for not liking someone else’s favourite hero. I’ve even been called toxic for making skill related arguments…

Botom line is, if you say or do something someone else doesn’t like, you’re immediately toxic. So we’re all toxic.