As a side note, this thread probably gets split into that other clusterduck of a thread.
While a ban is triggered when enough players have reported you, you can still appeal to it.The main problem why only really clean players get their ban lifted is because the CoC is rather vague:
When participating in communication of any kind (chat, voice communication, group finder), you are responsible for how you express yourself. You may not use language that could be offensive or vulgar to others.
Hate speech and discriminatory language is inappropriate, as is any obscene or disruptive language. Threatening or harassing another player is always unacceptable, regardless of language used. Violating any of these expectations will result in account restrictions. More serious and repeated violations will result in greater restrictions.
That “could” has a devastating meaning. It implies that anything that could offend someone yet everything could offend someone. Changing the “could” to an “is” would make the CoC more specific and clearer.
Nonetheless, most responses by the GM also 3 lines as an example of bad behavior and, no matter how you look at it, they all are offensive.
Something that is worth mentioning is how the report system works. We all know that it’s fully automated but there are some things we don’t know:
- Only one report of the same player counts.
- Reports decay over time.
- When silenced, no reports will count.
This would imply that you actually have to make a lot of players upset to get banned but we don’t know that since it’s unknown how many reports are required to trigger a warning.
Also,
This does sound a bit fishy to me. There are multiple reports where players got banned for gameplay sabotage because they weren’t communicating with their team but chat abuse? This would even contradict the code of conduct itself.