BANLIST addon

[HarleyM]

I'm sure that enough of you have played DotA to be familiar with the banlist program that is out there. Is there an addon out there to automatically keep track of players you never want to group with again, regardless of server? If so, is it individual only or does it allow you to share your lists? If not, would such an addon go against the Blizzard ToS? If such a thing is permitted, with all the complaints about dungeon finder I can't for the life of me understand why it isn't already out there.

[Deleted]

dont know if theres an addon, but you can get a pen and paper and write down the players you dont wana play with ? :P

[Stixxz]

You can ignore people from other realms, right click their name and click ignore and it shows in the ignore list the name and realm.

[Goldrinn]

You can ignore people from other realms, right click their name and click ignore and it shows in the ignore list the name and realm.

You're kidding, right? I've had some pretty damn annoying people in Random groups that I would've loved to ignore recently, but I'm pretty sure I tried it once a while ago and it said something along the lines of "Player not found". Is this a new addition, or did I just do something wrong that one time? ...Or are you lying? Don't lie to me, bro.

[Riboe]

If you find the default ignore list to be too short, there's plenty of addons to extent that ignore list and be shared by all of your characters.

EDIT: Even though such an addon or even a program/addon like the one you're talking about would never be able to keep the players out of your random groups. Only the default in-game ignore list can do this.

[Arcilux]

You're kidding, right? I've had some pretty damn annoying people in Random groups that I would've loved to ignore recently, but I'm pretty sure I tried it once a while ago and it said something along the lines of "Player not found". Is this a new addition, or did I just do something wrong that one time? ...Or are you lying? Don't lie to me, bro.

It only works if you are still grouped with them, whenever I try to go back and ignore after leaving it doesn't work. Also, it only seems to work if you do the ctrl-click or whatever it is instead of manually typing the name in. So type /ignore <ctrl-click player name>

[Soisoisoi]

You can ignore people on other servers, but you CAN'T ignore those who are on other Battlegroups that have been recently merged with yours, even if you're in the group still. That's what I heard anyhow, I know I've not been able to ignore everyone I'd like to. :/

[HarleyM]

If you find the default ignore list to be too short, there's plenty of addons to extent that ignore list and be shared by all of your characters.

EDIT: Even though such an addon or even a program/addon like the one you're talking about would never be able to keep the players out of your random groups. Only the default in-game ignore list can do this.

If someone is on my ignore list it will no longer put them in my dungeonfinder groups? I figured it still would I just wouldn't be able to hear them.

[Kragtik]

use the ingame ignore function
Does the right thing, and it prevents them from even joining your groups.

[HarleyM]

Honestly my real thought behind this was more of an 'early warning system' for others. If someone joins my group and I get 37 warnings that they are a ninja or like standing in fire I can be on the lookout for it.

[Deleted]

I'm going to make a slightly different response here, and rather than sharing my thoughts on an addon for WoW, instead explain (all the time comparing to the Wc3banlist program) why the idea of a vigilante-driven blacklist movement will probably never succesfully do its' job in any popular online game. I'd like to apologize for the following huge post, but if you read it to the end I hope you'll feel as I do towards the idea of a banlist. I also apologize for anything you find incomprehensible in this text due to bad telegraphing or just plain misuse of words. It's 5AM, looking at my text I can see it's below my peronal standard, but I'm not awake enough to do something about it.

There are two face-value problems we first need to tackle:
* People being unable to change names with zero effort or expense
* The player pool being small enough for the likelihood of your blacklist subjects ever running into you again to be high

In Wc3 you could change your name with no effort if a hundred or so people banned you for being a douchebag. In WoW it costs some money and is a LOT less convenient by comparison, so it's pretty much a non-issue. On the other hand, Wc3 had a lot of players and WoW has even more players - even on a battlegroup to battlegroup basis. Your personal banlist would probably never be big enough to ever run into a banned player again (how often did you ever see a banned player again in Wc3? I'd say once in a hundred games, assuming you only ever played one map like DotA).

The counter to this issue is, of course, to share a pool of bans. After all, even if I only ever saw a banned player every hundred games (and at this point I might as well point out that I had a 2500 name database after playing for about a year), the name pool provided by Banlist.nl was about ten times as large - and I'd probably run into someone who had been banned on that list every ten or so lobbies, as it would.

But with an open, shared pool of bans comes the followup issue: Abuse. As long as there isn't an equally well-used "goodlist" to measure positive feedback entries against negative feedback (like what PlayerScore 4.0 is trying to do but most likely won't succeed with; there will always be more hot-headed douches than there will be people who actively put up positive feedback), chances are that the people who will ban you just out of spite or for unfair reasons would flood the list with unreasonable bans.

Of course, following the footsteps of the Banlist program, the solution to THAT issue is to only allow approved players to contribute to this mass-list. And therein lies the final and foremost issue with any blacklist establishment ever: having enough good players volunteer to contributing to this list. In DotA, I basically banned at least one or two players per game for valid reasons - and the approved hosts banlist didn't help me avoid that. The very purpose of a growing banlist is to never have to play with these horrible people again, yet I kept on banning and banning almost every match I played.

One reason is, of course, that someone who misbehaved under the spotlight of an approved host would often take the minimal effort required to change his name - as previously stated, mostly a nonissue in WoW. The other reason is that for just one Warcraft III realm, I'd estimate that it takes around 2,000 approved hosts to keep enough bad players monitored for their presence in a lobby to be the exception rather than the rule to other players. For just one WoW battlegroup - and there are more battlegroups than there are Battle.Net realms - I'd put that number of required approved players to approximately 20,000 - yep, ten times the moderators on Warcraft III. Groups are half the size of a DotA match, and the playercount is way bigger. Neither of these are realistic. Not 2,000 hosts per Warcraft III realm (as we speak there are six on EU), and not 20,000 approved players per battlegroup in WoW. I am aware that I use arbitary numbers rather than real statistical figures all along this argument, but think about how inefficient Banlist has always been, and you'll realize it's a fair estimate. You would need this many active whistleblowers to keep all the bad people charted and avoided.

And thus, due to a fibonacci esque spiral (out, keep going, ride the spiral to the end and then just go where no one's been) of practical problems with a simple idea at core, all connected to the same reason why there are bad, unpolite players in the first place (aka human nature), a banlist will never be able to do what we all want it to do. Almost every single Wc3 player had the banlist program for varying reasons (being under the delusion that it would help them, ragebanning to get it out of their system, using the other non-ban-related functions, etc etc), but it still rarely ever helped anyone in the long run - and to this day, the DotA (and HoN, and even the more casual-oriented LoL) communities are still considered the most unfriendly and hateful active gaming communities. That's because it does not work.

Thank you for reading ^_^

[HarleyM]

Certainly true. However, that is only if you accept the premise that approved users was the only way to avoid the abuse issue. I do not. There are a few possible solutions, or at least options that would mitigate abuse. One would be keeping track of how many groups that person has been in. If you find that they have one negative response but have been in 30 dungeon finder groups, this is negligible. Another possibility would be REQUIRING people to rank either all 4 of their members, or none at all. Using this data, it would be relatively easy (albeit time consuming) to find out who isn't contributing meaningful data. My final solution would be to allow players to comment on their own downvotes. This would allow some measure of control over worthless complaints.

The main issue I personally see with such an addon is one you cited, but for a different reason. Size. With over 12 million subscribers and many more accounts, that is a lot of data, even if it is nothing but text. What would managing this likely cost, assuming the labor was free? If someone can help me solve THIS problem, I will gladly get to work on such an addon.

[snegro]

It would really only work on your server for all purposes. The reality of the situation is you aren't going to hold the power in random dungeons and have no power whatsoever in battlegrounds. There are addons in existence that share both your friends and ignore lists per character per server though.

[HarleyM]

It would really only work on your server for all purposes. The reality of the situation is you aren't going to hold the power in random dungeons and have no power whatsoever in battlegrounds. There are addons in existence that share both your friends and ignore lists per character per server though.

As a tank/heal I tend to hold more power than some, but that aside, if someone is able to post a list of 37 legit reasons someone should be kicked from the group, I know I would vote yes on that votekick. Battlegrounds I don't think you can kick anyway? But I don't really pvp.