Blizzard allowing griefing through report system

Support Customer Support
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I stream content to a VERY small audience and have been subjected to something recently and i’m unsure what action to take next.

Starting a few weeks ago i have been recieving “abusive chat” reports for no reason on another account(i cannot post on that account here on the forums because of this). I have seen people in chat telling others to do so and then days later my account is actioned. I open tickets of course…and initially didn’t follow through after i received the first copy and paste response about upholding the action because it didnt really matter since the account action was so small.

after this happened about 3 times the account began getting SUSPENDED. then i began turning in tickets every time in order to get the unfair action looked into. It took longer than the suspension for somebody to respond and again it was the same seemingly automated response about upholding the action.

As each time your account is actioned on the penalty increases and this didn’t stop…i eventually got suspended long enough that opening 4+ tickets got me in contact with an actual human…who immediately lifted the suspension and i set out to get back to leveling. Within less than 45 min of play i received yet another “abusive chat” warning and my heart sank…i knew i was again going to recieve a ban and have to go through the same process over and over.

My question is this: What exactly am i supposed to do about this? I have no way of knowing who is reporting me…although i have seen a few people in chat openly call on others to do so…that hasnt been the case every time. So how am i supposed to present this in the form of a ticket in order to get this bullying to stop.

This is on a hardcore character and one of the supensions had me logging in with 25 health left at level 40 because the action was taken mid fight. I literally cannot play the game right now and so far tickets have got me nowhere other than getting the supsension taken off the account.

I know the tendency on these forums is to assume guilt whenever anyone posts anything and that’s fine…for the sake of this post please just offer some advice what a person SHOULD do in this scenario to simply be able to play the game and hold those responsible accountable so that this behavior stops.

As it stands now the report feature is being abused and SUSPENDING the account…not muting it. In my eyes this is blizzard themselves allowing griefing through the in game report feature. As frustrating as this has all been i honestly just need to know what to do as far as opening a ticket an explaining everything…so far i have just got the run around about 80% of the time and am getting worn out.

For the record i am VERY careful about the chat content, not just because i stream but because i just dont care to engage in vulgar/hateful content anyways. There is nothing in the limited things i have said in game to warrant these actions and they are 100% the result of this automated system, especially now that blizzard has added account suspensions instead of muting characters.

For the love of god can a CM or somebody with the proper knowhow offer some actionable advice as to how i can move forward and get this stopped. It’s ruining the game for me as i simply cannot play it.

-thanks-

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It’s the other way around - it was full on account actions at first, but they found folks thinking they could just eat the time and still play. So they reapply the account actions to hammer the punishment home.

As for the general question: Blizzard doesn’t action folks for nothing because someone report it. They’d need to check if the rules was broken in order to apply chat actions and slowly build up to timeouts on repeat actions.

A blue here won’t be able to say much, but given the fact you had the amount to go into full account actions, then there is something not being paying any mind to.

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Don’t the suspension emails come with explanations of rules violated and sample text?

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im actually unsure if the emails come with sample text as i didnt check them…however when you open a ticket to appeal your account action it shows sample text. There was nothing in the sample text that is even remotely close to abusive chat…which is why the suspension was lifted.

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I don’t wish this to become muddled, so I’m going to close this thread for now while I work on my reply.

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For “no reason” is often subjective. It usually depends on the activity and the person being reported believes they are violating policy or not.

To be clear, our staff often use template responses, especially when replying to penalty reviews in order to keep the messaging consistent. This was explained a bit in the response where your penalty was overturned.

Again, I should clarify that the Game Master told you that your comments were a bit on the edge, but they decided to lean in your favor this time around.

That isn’t an admission stating that the penalty was at all done in error, but that we decided to provide a bit of education this time around in the hopes that the behavior would be corrected. To quote from that reply:

While we are showing leniency this time, we will not repeat that in the future. For now, you should see the suspension has been removed.

Yes, it is supposed to work that way. The point is to allow players to report behavior they feel may violate policy without the person reported being able to harass them for it. While I cannot say this of 100% of the folks reporting you, the majority seem to be those who are witnessing your chat and feel that it is beyond the pale.

What you should do about this is learn from it. Here are some examples of what you have done.

  1. Initiating discussions about conspiracy theories - which was done multiple times. I am just glancing at the chat logs on these reports and you use the exact same sentence, down to the triple question mark at the end on 9/11, 9/12, 9/13, 9/27. In Looking for Group no less.

  2. Advertising a Twitch URL. We do not allow advertising of channels in our game or on our forums.

  3. Multiple incidents of toxicity and other “PSA” statements intended to incite others.

Most regulars know there is often a lot more to the story than what the person telling it admits to. Though they will usually just provide details on how you can appeal and wait for me or another Support Forum Agent to shine the light.

It isn’t. It appears it is being used correctly by regular player who are seeing your chat with no other agenda than to remove the bad behavior they are seeing so that their game play can be more enjoyable.

That doesn’t seem to be the case, Rumplez.

Simple. Stop ruining the game for others and you shouldn’t have an issue.

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While I am in no way defending this dude I don’t see how the above statement and this one

While yes as stated by yourself it is being used for legitimate reasons but at the same time it’s also not. That is the portion of the player base (the X person said mass report y person so they do it) that we would like to see some form of action taken against.

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People say a lot of stuff in game, doesn’t make it true.

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True but in this situation the blue had confirmed that some of these reports are not due to any actual interaction the players had.

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You’re applying two different statements together; the first is talking about OP wanting to know who reported the OP, while the other is talking about account actions.

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Again no the blue states that the majority of reports are due to conduct between op and others. A majority but not 100%. This would imply false flagging. Im not defending op he clearly has as shown done the wrong thing and had players report him for it. He also had others report him for nothing as they had no interaction with him. These are the players I refer too

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I think you are reading WAY to much into things. Determining “Malicious False Reporting” you also have to determine whether malice is involved, and to prove that is REALLY REALLY difficult.

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That isn’t exactly what I said, but let me clarify.

Rumplez stated that people were reporting them because other people telling them to.

My statement was about that… as in I cannot say with 100% certainty that everyone who used the report option by their own initiative or found what they were reporting personally offensive.

I can say that 100% of the reports that resulted in a penalty were from chat that was considered a violation. How the person reporting it felt about it (i.e. their motivation for reporting) is irrelevant.

{Edit} Removed redundant sentence.

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Well I think if a report is made against another player with 0 interactions with one another its very simple to make that case no?

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You can be reported for anything under the moon or sun. Read Vrakthris’s post above yours.

Again, how do you prove Malicious Intent?

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What would you consider an interaction, Memberberry? The chat was in a public channel. The report is a Right-Click Report, which means that the reporting player actively right clicked on the offending chat line to submit it.

So while the person didn’t specifically speak to them, they did interact with them by reading the public chat.

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Posting in a public channel is not an interaction? If I see someone violating the chat rules as set about by the EULA and Social Contract, should I respond to it to validate my report in game?

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Thats fair and maybe a misunderstanding on my part as I interpreted what you said as a not 100% of the reports but the majority. I will own that misunderstanding. If you see it report it by all means I am for this. Like I said in my understanding that wasn’t the case where people who did not see it reported.