Im basically lifting this from a comment i posted, because i want to raise visibility of the issue. I know there is a reddit typical response to be condescending and holier than thou about this topic, but it really does need looking at.
This is the issue. Roughly two weeks ago i went 26-4 tinker mid and stomped the game, I am GM tinker but bad at dota so sometimes this happens. I had an overwatch penalty immediately after the game - 4 hour cd and 1 LP game. There is no way it could have been reviewed before the game even ended, and it was the first game I played in a while as I was away. I think i was mass reported by the salty enemy team, and maybe my own, i don’t know. In the following days, my behaviour and comms score have plummeted from around 11k to 7k and 5k, respectively. The past 3 days i have come online, won my LP game, queued into ranked, lost the game, and immediately been 4 hour overwatch cooldowned again, prompting me to log off. I did not grief at all in these games and I have been muted the past 4 days so have not been using comms at all. Before this, over my 10 years playing dota, i have been low prio a few times here and there, my language is pretty bad when playing with my friends, but I had maintained a high behaviour score, with thousands of commends.
The player is already able to mute other players, if they wish. Why cant we just make it so you can only issue a single, general report for a player, separate from muting them. If a player gets enough reports in a game(say, 3), it queues the game for review. If the human reviewer agrees that the player is cheating or literally griefing (destroying items, feeding down mid, blocking camps, afking in the enemy mines for 30 mins as pos 4 until the game ends) then a strict penalty is issued (CD + LP). If no human review is performed after X time, a warning is shown to the player stating they were reported, but no further action is taken. If the reviewer finds them not guilty, no further action is taken against the reported party, and the reporting players are issued a notification saying the player was found not guilty and reminded to only issue reports for genuine reasons. No need for behaviour scores. Escalating overwatch penalties when guilty judgements or repeat misuse warnings are assessed, up to permanent bans, that go down a tier after a month or so of no penalties. This would remove the most toxic players from the normal pool quickly, give agency to the players to decide for themselves who to mute, and remove responsibility from valve from policing peoples chat in a competitive video game for adults.
Why cant we be allowed to be adults and take responsibility for ourselves? Why do we need valve to implement chat filters and automated penalties when we already have the option to mute? Why implement a system that can be abused at either end, that punishes players for losing the game? Why implement a system that sets the threshold for “High reports” as 4 in a game, then allow each player in the game to issue 6 to each player? Why even allow players to report the enemy team for voice abuse, let alone then actually count that report?
Its obviously broken and needs fixing. I have made some suggestions above that I feel would greatly reduce people abusing the system to spam reports. All it takes is one game to set you on the death spiral into chain queuing low priority. Do we really want this to be a game where nobody can talk to each other (or even tip!)? Where we all know baseless blaming and scapegoating is a big part of the toxicity problem but is not addressed in any way and actively encouraged?
My “normal” behaviour score was 12k and it still is, my communication was 12k till a month ago, right now it’s at 7450 going down every summary despite me being a very nice team mate that does not flame. -100 -200 communication score mandatory, I’ll soon be unable to interact in any way for no reason (lol).
This is exactly what i am talking about. Its the same for everyone who experiences it. You will go to less than 6k comms score then it will freeze. This process can be started in a game where nobody uses comms at all and nobody griefs, all it takes is one enemy spamming 6 reports on you.
You dont need to say you are an angel for this not to be a bug - I highly doubt ANY of the people commenting here have never got frustrated in a dota game and told someone to fuck off or whatever. Hate speech like racism or death threats should not really be tolerated, but at the end of the day, every player already has the ability to mute any other player completely separately from this behaviour system.
What is currently happening is, after something was changed a few weeks ago, players are being issued automated overwatch penalties after a single game with “high report rate”, which I believe, after some basic testing, can be triggered by a single player spamming 6 reports. This then begins a downward spiralling of comms score until it reaches below 6k, where it will freeze in place. This can happen even with chat disabled. This is clearly a bug or some kind of unintentional behaviour and needs fixing, regardless of your opinion on “toxicity in videogames”
Check my most recent post