Hello there, community. I just finished a competitive game where the toxicity level was just incredible. People flaming each other, the other team making fun of one of our team mates throwing by inactivity, and then finally disconnecting after almost 20 minutes of match.
And the problem is this is only getting worse and worse. I normally report this kind of behaviour, and every now and then I get the fancy message when I log in the game saying that some action was taken. At this point, I don’t know if that is just a mock-up screen that appears randomly or if that stuff is real, but what is sure is that I lost all hope in the reporting system. When I log in the game I hope to have some fun, but what I normally get is exactly the opposite. I close the game without any desire to keep playing for some time.
Is there any plans to fight the toxicity in this game? since the game is getting more and more toxic, I would guess that the reporting system is not working. Are there any plans of implementing other mechanisms to avoid toxicity?. Do you people at Blizzard read the chat? let’s say I right click in an offensive comment, is there any real follow up? do they have access to the chat and read something there? or is it just a placebo?
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Who knows. The message might be real but the reaction might not be what you expect. You might expect punishment but in reality in might be a little slap on the wrist. I never had any actions taken against me so I don’t know but I’m sure people won’t get banned after one wrong action. Not even after 5 in a row. At most maybe they’ll silence him. That’s just my guess.
Blizzard doesn’t want to be transparent in this but I think they should. And this endorsement system they introduced a while back is also wrong imo. I get it, they want a positive way to help the problem but that’s just naive imo or worse, perhaps even just a way to show they want to do something without actually trying to do something.
People who are consistently toxic on itself is already a problem, feeling that Blizzard doesn’t do anything about it just adds to the problem. It’s actually the biggest problem because people will be toxic. It’s just part of the game. A guy that clearly threw the game should not get a slap on the wrist.
The endorsement system was good on paper… But as soon as people figured out it meant nothing it died.
They should really do something like priority queuing for higher endorsements. Loot boxes just mean nothing.
Sadly with abusive chat reports, it takes volume, over a short period of time to get them to look. So someone behaving like a knob in one game and getting reported, probably isn’t going to even get looked at. Even if they say some horrific things.
Is there any plans to fight the toxicity in this game?
No, in fact the OW team are fully aware of the problem and simply don’t care.
Do you people at Blizzard read the chat?
No they don’t, chat logs don’t appear to be stored.
is there any real follow up?
Reports work by consensus: if a user gets enough reports of a given violation from multiple users in multiple games then action is taken. The problem is that most players don’t report bad players.
I like the idea of priority queuing for higher endorsement levels, that would be neat.
Another idea that I would like to see implemented is having 2 different queues, one for non-reported people, and one for people reported for toxicity. If a player got reported in their last match, then they get queued in the toxic queue next match. If they behaved well in their last match, then they keep getting queued in the normal queue.
Also, I’m not claiming to be Zenyatta here, I also get triggered sometimes, and I understand it happens sometimes. However, it would be nice to have some visibility of that. Imagine a button in the summary screen, where you could flag a player as toxic after the match ended, something like the endorsement screen with a thumbs-up and thumbs-down. After the match, you could see a number saying “x people in your last match think you misbehaved”
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I did see a few things where people have noticed that the bad eggs seem to get dumped into games together more often. But that might not be a thing anymore.
I did for awhile think that having number of avoid slots linked to your endorsement level would be good. But I think more people would care about priority ques. Which would kind of soft force the badly behaved players to play together a lot more often.
Ultimately, if someone is reported enough they check the logs. But if you are getting enough reports over a period of time for them to look, you almost certainly deserve the ban.
Some vindictive reports in one or two games will do nothing to you. It has to be over a sustained period which shows that player just has a bad attitude, and is unable to control their behaviour.
There doesn’t seem to be anything in place to really decide what is crossing the line, for example my last match a guy assumed i was a girl so he spent the entire match threatening to kill and rape me, everyone in the group reported him but they’re not going to look at that and say that’s going too far and ban him, he’ll at best get like a day where he can’t play then be back on threatening again
- Silenced.
- Suspended (Temp. Bans)
- Permanent Bans.
Silenced accounts have violated various rules on behavior and communication and are typically minor transgressions and/or first offfense, it can last a day to a few days. Each subsequent transgression will see you silenced for longer periods of time.
2. Suspended accounts are first and foremost cheating and/or hacking. In case of extreme circumstances regarding behavior and communication (death threats and similar) and there is a precedent of similar behavior an account is usually suspended for a day or two. Subsequent transgressions extends the suspension.
3. Permanent Bans are rarely if ever a thing anymore. In cases of such a ban you have severely compromised Blizzard systems and/or other users. They’re not gonna ban your IP anymore as they once did, but they will ban your account (but who cares can just make a free and new one…)
At best toxic behavior falls into the category of silencing said person unless it borders death threats and have precedence… Yes, they are actively doing something, but no you’re not really going to see much change.
The change has to come from the Community actively shunning toxic behavior. Blizzard can only do so much, it is not on them to secure a good community behavior - it is on the community to ensure this. That includes, but is certainly not limited to holding streamers accountable for their actions.