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Man, I wouldn't want to be a community manager in those games. Trash-talking is one thing – and I'm quite quick with the mute-button (and usually let them know)
by WA 9y ago
Man, I wouldn't want to be a community manager in those games. Trash-talking is one thing – and I'm quite quick with the mute-button (and usually let them know), but something that is incredibly hard to spot/punish is behavior in competitive games. Once you reach a certain skill level, a single guy on the team makes or breaks the entire match.
With League of Legends, the problem is that a match lasts at least 20 minutes (not sure if this is still the case) until someone can surrender. A while back, I then played Heroes of the Storm, where most matches aren't longer than 20 minutes.
Nowadays, I played a lot of Rocket League, where each match is 5 minutes (or 7 at most, depending on the amount of "goal cams"). But still, they can feel a bit like an eternity, if your mate decides that "you're a fucking noob, because you missed the ball 10 seconds into the game and we certainly can't win in the next 4:50 minutes" and just plays like an idiot. Sure, you can report those players, but ultimately, someone has to review the games and I suspect this is quite impossible to achieve.
So, what's the solution? I don't know. Maybe the solution is on an individual level – stop playing "for the win", but try to enjoy the ingame moments (like "I hit the ball mid-air" or "I achieved a pentakill"). Or only play with friends on your team and mute the other team.
After all, in most competitive games, you achieve about 50% win rate anyways, once you reach a certain mid-range skill level and don't play with your friends, because the match making algorithms will sometimes give you good team mates and other times bad, or toxic, ones.
- staffordrj 9y ago> Sure, you can report those players, but ultimately, someone has to review the games and I suspect this is quite impossible to achieve. They don't have to review the games if one account has many reports of "Unsportsmanlike conduct".
- purple-again 9y agoTried and failed. You just reinvented the downvote button.
- throwaway2048 9y agoThen people who had a bad game get reported and banned.
- ryanlol 9y agoBut why? If someone always has a bad game, their matchmaking is seriously miscalibrated.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago"But why?" Because people are assholes. They'll blame that person for them losing a couple points on their rating, and report them as a form of revenge.
- ryanlol 9y agoI really don’t get what you’re suggesting. Why would the reports be anomalous?
- s73v3r_ 9y agoAre you confused with this idea that people can be assholes, and in a moment of frustration would do something bad in the hopes of screwing over someone else? There really isn't a deep thing here.
- ryanlol 9y agoDo you believe that people are assholes in such an inconsistent manner that it can’t be adjusted for in large datasets?
- throwaway2048 9y agoyes, valve has had constant problems in dota2 with abusive reports leading to bans. Streamers that stream all their gameplay that have never even once done or said anything abusive got bans.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoDecent sized Twitch streamers can easily get a big enough group of people to overwhelm the report thingy.
- jotm 9y agoThe solution is to block the person you don't like, never having to see or hear from him again. Seems pretty fair. You'll be matched with less "toxic" people, they'll be matched with similar minded people, which they may or may not like. No need for suspensions or bans, imo.
- bearforcenine 9y agoIt would be great if many of the games worked like that. Sadly, in my experience, you can report/block someone and then immediately be matched with them again. This is especially true in games like Heroes of the Storm which have smaller player bases. Being able to block someone and not be matched with them again is also a great mechanism to dodge better players. If you have a hard time beating a particular player? Block/report them, avoid being matched with them, and have an easier time winning.
- philipov 9y agoThat is the most obvious solution, and completely wrong. If you give people the ability to block others from being matchmade with them, they will use it to keep themselves from being matched with players who play poorly, but aren't at all toxic. At higher skill ranks, where the player pool is small and there is a high chance of being matched with the same players repeatedly, it has huge opportunity for abuse. It is a good demonstration of why it is a hard problem, because you can't just implement the most naively obvious solution: you have to design against the abuse-case.
- Joe-Z 9y agoI'd much rather have a system which may fail for a small subset of players, than having a game company tell me what constitutes good or bad behaviour. This is a problem which _can't_ be solved by a central authority. That's like asking the police to go around making people be nice to each other: Yes, they can control the most blatant abuses (IRL: violence, theft, etc. -> Online: Cheating, DDosing, etc.), but they will never be able to - and should never have the right to - control for every possible sub-optimal communication. You yourself have the tools to do that (IRL: go away, call someone out, etc. -> online: Mute, Leave the game, etc.)
- lobotryas 9y agoLet me make sure I understand your position correctly. You want to punish players who, for whatever reason, play worse than their rank/score/position would imply they should play? This sounds absolutely ridiculous to me. There can be dozens of reasons for a player "underperforming". Take whatever punishment the game gives for conceding and leave the game if you are stuck with a bad team of randoms. Or, better yet, make friends or join a clan of like-minded players. Even if someone is being rude in chat/voice chat - mute them and move on. It's weird to me to see you and other posters in this thread look to a higher authority to solve such a trivial problem instead of doing this yourself.
- always_good 9y agoI re-read their post and don't see how you understood their post that way.
- Anderkent 9y agoThe main complaint of the op is someone 'playing like an idiot'. That sounds very much like underperforming compared to their rank.
- ShabbosGoy 9y agoThe fairest matchmaking system is one where you can advance ranks when the matchmaker predicts you will lose.
- sli 9y agoYou missed an important qualifier. OP is talking about players who play badly relative to their rank on purpose in retaliation for perceiving a team member's skill level as not being high enough. It sounds like it's overly specific, but is indeed a common issue. Especially in LoL.
- jarsin 9y agoThe only real solution I know of is to not play multiplayer games. Every single multiplayer game suffers from toxicity at some level. Even in 1 vs 1 games the other play can mess with you until you go full tilt.
- vitaflo 9y agoThe real solution is not to play on a team with randoms, and not allow comms between competing teams. PUBG is a perfect example of this. You can play on 1 to 4 person squads, so if friends aren't online, just play it solo. You're not forced into a match with randoms on your team. You can easily turn off comms with enemies (and it's proximity only anyway). I've never played a less toxic multiplayer game for this reason. If you just reduce comms with enemies, and give players the ability to play a game with 1 - N friends without needing randoms, the problem solves itself.
- scrollaway 9y ago> The real solution is not to play on a team with randoms That's not a solution, that's a workaround. It's like saying "The solution to a community being toxic is to leave it". It's only a solution if only the toxic members follow that advice.
- supreme_sublime 9y agoI disagree, it is a solution that you yourself can actually implement. It isn't dependent on anyone else. I've only played PUBG with randoms once, before PUBG changed the interface there was one time my team forgot to uncheck the box and the guy we played with was actually really cool. Even though most of the people were screaming "CHINA NUMBA ONE" in the lobby. A game like that depends a lot on communication though and even if randoms aren't toxic, they won't universally be willing to use a mic, or have one. There are lots of other reasons it is better to play with people you already know. Even while mostly playing with friends, I've still managed to meet cool people through these games that I've become friends with. Eventually the toxic people will realize that their toxicity isn't getting an outlet and will either move on to another game or change their behavior. Point being, there are steps you can personally take to mitigate the toxicity you experience and giving you those tools is pretty much all a developer can do.