Report Feedback for Players

Oooh this can be my first post since I know quite a lot about this stuff coming from the CS team!

While of course only we can 100% verify if a bot is in fact a bot, its honestly not hard to spot. Generally within about 10-20 seconds of watching a character move we can without a doubt know it’s a bot however we still make sure to “dot the I’s and cross the t’s” on it by using some other undisclosed things that we can see. So I wouldn't be surprised if a player says "I without a doubt know it’s a bot" odds are you're probably right at some point on it. I know we've said it before but a large amount of the bots that we see are just simply compromised accounts.

For those that lack the context the Overwatch team is talking about wanting to give players some sort of feedback on reports that players submit on other players (i.e. hackers, spammers, toxic players, etc). It’s a great idea, but you have to remember WoW is a vastly different game than Overwatch, even from its community standpoint. In WoW for example you encounter a far larger amount of players at a higher consistency because of the fact it’s an ever existing world leading to potentially more reporting. Also something that we notice is that when players report, they end up reporting very consistently, thus leading to far more reports in something like WoW compared to Overwatch.

Trust me when I say there are a lot of player reports that we investigate and other game reporting is a little different than WoW's, partly because there's so many categories and things that fall within certain systems because it’s just handled differently. Take for example bot reports vs spam reports two totally different methods and systems that takes different kinds of reports. It would just be difficult to consolidate that data into one system and even then it would be a large amount of data.

I do agree though that more could always be done and there’s always potential in making players feel like their reports are worthwhile because its honestly priceless. I will definitely pass on things like this so the CS leadership and dev leadership can see these kinds of asks from players. :)

09/26/2017 05:37 PMPosted by Melianthe

New Blue.

I'm kind of freaked out right now.

What is going on?!

What is happening!?

I don't know! It feels weird... wait...this blue text... feels nice... almost like it has some sort of power. A power that feels like I can declare official things...

Pineapple does not belong on pizza!

Yeah... that feels good.

I don't think it would be a good idea to publicize players that were punished through these systems. It creates a negative tone and focuses away from the actual cause of the punishment and also discourages actual reformation for players.

A lot of players are in the boat of breaking the ToS once and then never doing it again (its amazing what a 6 month vacation can do sometimes). Before I became an employee I had been suspended for language once or twice and learned my lesson, there's even people that work at Blizzard now that previously they had been banned/suspended for things like botting. They learned their lesson and respect the rules now.

Let's be honest most of us break a rule here and there to figure out where the boundary lies but I don't think it's right to shame players because of it. Even as horrible and game ruining as botting is, that person deserves a chance to be a regular player and not be branded by a community.

09/27/2017 11:46 AMPosted by Zyký

While I can agree, I can also disagree. Because lately it seems like Blizzard wants to start calling out people(particularly in Overwatch) telling other players when their reports turned into a ban. I feel its a little shameful for a company to have many different standpoints of the same behavior and expect it to blow over well, even if within different branches.

While I agree that you shouldn't publicize a player for being banned, I just believe that Blizzard should be upholding the same values between games instead of having different ones, even if some people don't agree with the values.

Ah sorry should've been clearer on this considering there's been a gap in the context. What the Overwatch team has proposed doesn't reveal the players but lets you know what your reports resulted in. Then someone previously started discussing that they thought players should be publicly shamed for doing things like botting.

There is a difference between the two and I wanted to outline something I felt would be a problem with it. It's not really a difference in ideas or philosophy on this issue, as Overwatch also would not be publicly shaming players using this proposed system.

While we have called out a player here and there the circumstances are usually very different and it's crossed the line in a public fashion (ex. a forum post). Its not something we regularly do.