What will Blizzard do about toxic players?

[Normie]

what fell by the wayside though, is the communities' ability to selfcorrect itself by avoiding toxic players.

Which is why we need modifications to existing game mechanics that encourage positive play.

I don't think the community policing itself ever really existed. However, when you were only able to run grouped content with a player-formed group, the likelihood that you would run into a random asshole stranger was low. The likelihood that you will run into a random asshole stranger in LFR/LFD is obviously pretty high.

But I'm not really talking about people who need to be banned from the game. Those people eventually do get banned. It's the people who just make the game tedious and unpleasant when it shouldn't be. Or, looked at it another way, who make a game people play for fun, not fun. They're not demons that need to be banned, but they need to be retrained to make the game fun for everyone.

[xanzul]

And bloody Amen to this. In most mmos with communities that are supportive you can't even LEVEL unless you can be civil and learn to cooperate. WoW was incredibly simple after playing FF11 prior to it, but the new age of gaming just doesn't encourage giving a shit about your fellow gamers until the Normal/Heroic modes, by which time it's too damn late for them to have learned the skills they should have had from the start.

Again player reputation never mattered. If you were a decent player and enough of an asset to your guild you pretty much had carte blanche to do anything you wanted to do without consequence. Queue systems and cross realm tech allows players to no longer depend on those types of players. Like I said the worst of the worst of this community are threatened by anything that makes them irrelevant such as LFD.

[Grumash]

Blizz has given you multiple ways to deal with toxic players without themhaving to ban their own paying customers. You should probably realise blizz cares more about keeping their playerbase than trying to differentiate the assholes from the whiners. Assholes pay 15$ a month too.

[xanzul]

I don't think you understand.
There isn't exactly some sort of trauma involved. I "tolerate" toxic players and get the job done. That doesn't mean I like them being there.
I'd be lying if it didn't impact me on some level though which is usually frustration and annoyance.
These people introduce increase entropy into the system though. This is bad for -all- of us whether you're aware of the concept of entropy or not.

You don't have to tolerate toxic players though. This is what I don't get. We have ways of removing people we consider toxic from our game play whereas before we didn't have that ability. I'm very rarely in a LFD/LFR where someone is being toxic and we aren't able to get rid of him. We have more choice now not less.

[Normie]

Blizz has given you multiple ways to deal with toxic players without themhaving to ban their own paying customers. You should probably realise blizz cares more about keeping their playerbase than trying to differentiate the assholes from the whiners. Assholes pay 15$ a month too.

Blizzard is more concerned with creating more new subscriptions than with keeping old ones. New players are much more important to the game than old ones. The average age of an active account is a little over 1 year.

[xanzul]

Blizz has done plenty to deal with toxic players:
1. Ban immunity if a toxic is kicked repeatedly from a group it takes longer to kick them next time, have had them join with 3 hour kick immunity from get go.
2. You can click to ignore/report a toxic player unless they actually say something in chat.
3. Ignoring someone no longer means you will never get paired with them again in instances. (some point during mop)
4. Name/faction change gives them a clean slate from your ignore list.
5. Cannot ignore battle id's (the person) you can only ignore individual toon, allowing for a reroll/change toon harrasment.
6. If you report someone all messages sent are removed from your log so you cant take screenies to support your case or click to ignore. (I doubt the report claim perma ignores)
7. Ninja looting is considered acceptable in most cases.
8. Kicking somone removes their deserter debuff so they can hop right back into trolling, if you leave in disgust you get deserter debuff.

oh wait...

The simple fact remains we as players have many ways of dealing with these issues. There are consequences just not the ones you prefer and quite frankly, thank god for that. Far too many people in this community blow things way out of proportion and want punishments that just simply don't fit the crimes.

[xanzul]

Something I would like to see Blizzard do is to mute people. If people can't be reasonable then they shouldn't be allowed to talk to anyone in game for a limited amount of time, with that time being increased with consecutive mutes.

They already do this for trade chat. Again a cursory glance at customer support forums will show Blizzard is doing significantly more than people like the OP would have you believe.

---------- Post added 2013-06-17 at 01:49 AM ----------

1. There is a dual system of both, I rarely kick (only offline) and have come back from a 6 month break and seen this.
2. Cant ignore a ninja puller or an afker wanting a carry if they don't say something.
5. Infraction control is in the eyes of a blizz employee/bot who only is concerned with t&c not QoL.
6. Screenshots are needed for reporting to guilds directly either my own or another (if their behaviour warrants it) No nee for the few to make the rest look bad
7. Stealing the healers trinket while you are tanking is perfectly fine.
8. while you are leveling this is more obvious than @90 and the queues are longer, I dont want to wait an hour+ to meet the same douchebag again.

Alot of your arguments are just putting words into my mouth, as I recall you are not me. I am surprised at what you consider to viable arguments for these. New players are to be guided, trash is to be ignored, I'm not an elitist I've spent my 9 years of wow in the same casual guild having fun with my wow family. get off you high horse.

If anyone is on a high horse it is people like you who seem to think just because you don't get vigilante justice that means players aren't punished for their actions. Again there are consequences just not the ones you prefer and yet again thank god for that.

[Razorice]

Why should Blizzard do something about those players? If you can't handle someone being rude to you online, you shouldn't be online.

[xanzul]

^ This.

It's market strategy. They want to keep the toxic players just as happy as the non-toxic players, because $$$.
The only time they actually punish people is when those people might cause Blizzard to earn less $$$ (bots, gametime sellers, ...), not when they are annoying other players (last I know even item duplicators don't easily get banned either) because the official Blue response then is:

The ignore function can be used if someone harasses you.

No. Not because $$$$. Blizzard doing things to cause paying customers to leave means less $$$$ not more. Stop letting your hate for Blizzard blind you. Again I'm pretty sure a company who has been around 20+ years knows which types of customers are worth catering to.

[Normie]

Why should Blizzard do something about those players? If you can't handle someone being rude to you online, you shouldn't be online.

The fact that everyone around you can tolerate you farting doesn't mean it's okay for you to fart.

The fact that you can breathe a fart without (major) physiological harm doesn't mean you have no right to complain when someone farts.

The fact that the air in a room full of farting people is safe to breathe doesn't mean people will pay $15/mo to visit that room.

[xanzul]

As long as they keep paying, they will be seen as customers.

This is why companies like Blizzard no longer follow the antiquated idea that the "customer is always right". It chases away customers and results in profit loss. Blizzard has no problem sending players packing if they are disrupting the game or the community in any way whatsoever. $15 a month is nothing compared to the thousands Blizzard would lose if they didn't ban players for bad behavior. It is in Blizzard's and the customer's best interest for them to punish players and they do. Again a cursory glance at customer support forums and here proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

[Polygons]

I hope they do something about the raiding elitists intoxicating the entire raiding scene.

[xanzul]

Back in tbc my guild was runing a site that checked every player on the server if he done something wrong or not.
It was like this:
*If toxic player ninjaed a guild member they were on black list. (or any1 else)
*If toxic player was talking bad abauth some1 (guild or any1 else) we made sure he was not invited to any raids (pug) and if he started to make his own group we pretty much attacked him till he transvered off the server. (we wanted to make server as healty as posible)
*If toxic player was wiping ppl on purpose (kazzak pulls) he got reported by whole server.
*If toxic player scammed some1, all the screenshots of his scam were on a site. (very helpfull even to other players that were not part of guild as a protection against scammers)
*If toxic player was stealing from other guilds (bank) or disabanded guild he was blacklisted (before banks we were using lvl 1 alts too store stuff...usualy a gm of guild did that)
*Bots were also on the list

So we were pretty much server police back in the days. But when they added crosserver LFG/LFR it was kinda pointless to blacklist offserver ppl.

So if comunity goes against toxic players you can fix a thing or two. Its all posible.

Again another great example of the worst of the worst complaining about community. So basically you harassed players through external websites and have the gall to complain about a bad community? YOU are what makes this community bad. Blizzard had the same rules and policies back then as they do now and if anything it is harder for players to get away with anything they just simply need to be reported. Ever think to consider you may have fostered the idea that Blizzard doesn't punish players by contributing to players not being reported because you preferred vigilante justice?

[IRunSoFarAway]

Do you play LoL? they really did clean up the toxic players. statistics agree with me

I played LoL a while ago, iirc can't you report someone for being bad? I'd absolutely love that option in WoW if blizzard actually monitored anything.

I think the only thing they can do is suspend people that are being absolute douches, a GM can easily just watch what a player is doing after he's reported and act accordingly.

[xanzul]

Nothing, they pretty much created perfect environment for them and they'll just maintain it.
Blizzard devolved from douchebag tolerant to douchebag centered company. Currently assholes are their most valued customers and they'll continue catering to them. Until subs tank even more, then perhaps Blizzard might consider pulling their head out of their ass and think about approach that won't favor douchebags above anyone else. We are nowhere close to that point yet.

Do you not see the irony in complaining about a bad community when you call others douchebags? Again people like you are why the community is in the shape it is in. Stop blaming Blizzard and stop blaming the game. If the community is bad it is because the PLAYERS made it bad and spreading misinformation that Blizzard doesn't do anything about bad behavior simply compounds the problem by promoting apathy.

---------- Post added 2013-06-17 at 02:05 AM ----------

Do you expect the playerbase to change their reporting behaviour, so that they report more often? Does Blizzard expect them to? No, it's unrealistic. Of course it would be the easiest solution, but it just won't happen, not matter how much you want it. So a different solution has to be found, what you suggested is not effective/realistic.

Either Blizzard has to do something that the right players get reported more often or they have to find a different solution altogether. Just sitting around saying "But they all just have to report them!" doesn't help anyone.

How is reporting players for bad behavior not helping? Are you kidding me right now? Seriously? People like YOU and the OP and others in this thread are why this community is bad. Why the fuck would you not report bad behavior? Really? What the fuck is wrong with you?

[Seefer]

There is probably more to this story then. I'm assuming what you reported them for every day for a month was either a shoddy report with no corroborating evidence or it was something that they really didn't care about (i.e. something that happened to offend you but not actually a violation of the ToS).





Not true at all. The instant you report someone in-game they automatically go on your iggy list for 3 days. That includes mid-dungeon/LFR.

Really? so why is it when I right click and hit ignore it says player not found?

As for my reporting? I have reported for names and racism and the same people are there every day.

[Deleted]

Everyone in wow is a toxic player ( to a certain degree of course ). Denying that would just be a sign of one's own pathetic state of mediocrity, ignorance and self belief of greatness. These 3 combined are a bitch, don't fall into it.

Really? so why is it when I right click and hit ignore it says player not found?

As for my reporting? I have reported for names and racism and the same people are there every day.

You already have means at your disposal to deal with such situations, it's called the "ignore" function. Use it, or deal with it. No one will get punished because you feel offended. Stop being a little bitch.

[Drefan]

If you believe some player that you know of is "toxic" just ignore that person. It's as simple as that.
Once you've ignored someone you are done, you never have to hear from that person again. I do not know if you ignore someone, if you will ignore every character etc that bnet / wow account make, however if that's not the case it should be added I guess.

[xanzul]

Before Blizzard added features that promote and increase the number of toxic players drastically, it was entirely possible to solve some issues like that.

Nowadays it's impossible. Neither the players reporting nor the GMs themselves can cope with the sheer amount of toxic players nowadays.
Also a lot of toxic players try to go very close to the line where it's still accepted by GMs (because they can not do anything about it) but they don't cross it, so both the players suffering from the toxic player and the GMs know that he deserves life-long pain but no one can do anything about it.

If the majority of the participants of a system suffer hard and no one can solve it entirely, the only solution is to change the system back to what it was (e.g. remove at least some anonymity).

Blizzard can't punish players if they aren't reported. It honest to god is as simple as that. Blizzard has bent over backwards to streamline the entire process from reporting to handing out punishments. They are able to handle these tickets faster than ever before because of the changes and because it was a needed change. Blizzard has put in a lot of time improving these systems precisely because they know how important it is to remove toxic players from the game but the entire system falls apart when people like you try to justify apathy and spread misinformation. Again go to the customer support forums or do a search here if you don't believe me. Players who get reported DO get punished whether you people want to acknowledge it or not.

[Neemo]

League is a video game. You play to have fun. If someone is behaving in a manner that makes it no longer fun for you and you no longer want to play, their behavior is toxic.

To all those players still claiming league hasn't cleaned up I say good luck with your faith - I'll take an actual statistic.

That said, it is still a long way from being a pleasant environment.