4 ms·

The 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, t

by jotm 9y ago

The 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 ago
It 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 ago
That 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 ago
  I'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.)
  - philipov 9y ago
    I'm not sure whether you're agreeing with me or not, because, while I don't think it's possible to solve this problem using a central authority, it is a problem that affects a very large portion of the playerbase, so your dichotomy is false. It is not a problem that affects a "small subset of players"
    - Joe-Z 9y ago
      No the "small subset of players" was referring to top players that would be affected by people misusing blocking other players. As for all the players "affected" by this problem: People should learn to chill out. In a virtual, anonymous setting, some people will use the opportunity to be mean to you. That's why muting and block was introduced. I don't get the big deal, even though a big number of people seem to be "affected". Actually, one of the wort statements in the whole article: "There’s no IRL and online anymore. This is just all reality now." WTF? That is the _point_ of creating virtual spaces or play per se. If I want a dose of reality I might as well watch the news and do some bookkeeping.
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    And the games companies, the ones making the games, disagree. They believe that this toxic behavior is affecting more people than the alternative options are, and so they want to nip it in the bud.
- jotm 9y ago
  Yeah, I didn't think about that. I just played for fun, not competitiveness.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
  I think a better solution (better than what currently exists) would entail centralizing gaming profiles which would require you to share profile data across games and game companies so bad behavior in one game is reported to all of your games.
swang 9y ago
> The solution is to block the person you don't like No. This doesn't work in Overwatch. Because Blizzard removed this ability. Right when Overwatch came out, you could select a player's profile and essentially tell Blizzard's algorithm that you didn't want to play with this person anymore (Avoid Player). But Blizzard decided to remove it because they found out a very good Widowmaker (a sniper character) was being excluded by a ton of people so they decided to just remove the feature altogether so that scenario doesn't happen. However, at the time the Widowmaker character was overpowered where Widowmaker should have just gotten a nerf to her abilities (she went through a nerf and a buff since then) but instead, nope, now you can't stop playing with toxic players until they've been banned by Blizzard. Now blocking players just means, I don't want to read messages from them. It doesn't prevent players from throwing matches, which is the biggest issue since you can't "block" bad play
- mbrumlow 9y ago
  I think the said the "solution is", it does not matter if the functionality exist today. Its more of how the gaming industry should handle these situations. Simply blocking somebody should make it so you can't ever be matched with, or have to communicate with them again. In some games that might be harder said then done, but you could at least make sure you are never on the same team, and that if the player becomes an opponent that its name is obfuscated and they can't chat back.
  - always_good 9y ago
    Not very great for the community to make every single person play with a toxic player and then block them. You want to do the work for them. Would you say that's a solution for hackers, too? "Meh, just block them."
    - mbrumlow 9y ago
      The entire problem though is what is 'toxic' is subjective. Today we find this behavior okay, and tomorrow we don't. It could be simply having a MAGA hat on could be 'toxic'. You also have to worry about /toxic/ group behavior. The masses are not always right. So just because somebody has had a lot of people report them does not mean they are toxic. For any of this to work the very behavior that is not allowed must be defined to the T. But anyways, This is not my argument, I was merely trying to correct the assumptions of a post. And suggesting that because some feature does not exist today is not a very good reason why a suggested solution can't work or should not be considered.
nkrisc 9y ago
That's not really a great solution, because it doesn't really work all that well. Toxic people are toxic and they work to find ways to actively subvert the mitigations against their toxic behavior. It puts the onus on the people just trying to have fun to carefully manage and curate their experience just so they can have a good time. These companies care and take these measures because as a player, if I open Overwatch and my first match of the day is full of assholes actively trying to ruin my experience instead of just playing the game, I'm just going to log off and not play anymore.
ShabbosGoy 9y ago
Valve already implemented that in Dota 2 with a hidden tier where game ruiners, bot users/exploiters, etc would be grouped together. They also capped the max ELO you could gain during calibration if you are in that shadowbanned tier. It was calculated based on the number of reports you received in the last n games.
dvlsg 9y ago
Overwatch tried that. People started blocking everyone better than them. In the end, one of the top widowmaker players couldn't find a match, because everyone who didn't want to play against him had blocked him. Actually, I'm not sure block is the word blizzard used. Avoid, maybe? The end result was more or less the same.

by jotm 9y ago

bearforcenine 9y ago

It 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 ago

That 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 ago
I'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.)
- philipov 9y ago
  I'm not sure whether you're agreeing with me or not, because, while I don't think it's possible to solve this problem using a central authority, it is a problem that affects a very large portion of the playerbase, so your dichotomy is false. It is not a problem that affects a "small subset of players"
  - Joe-Z 9y ago
    No the "small subset of players" was referring to top players that would be affected by people misusing blocking other players. As for all the players "affected" by this problem: People should learn to chill out. In a virtual, anonymous setting, some people will use the opportunity to be mean to you. That's why muting and block was introduced. I don't get the big deal, even though a big number of people seem to be "affected". Actually, one of the wort statements in the whole article: "There’s no IRL and online anymore. This is just all reality now." WTF? That is the _point_ of creating virtual spaces or play per se. If I want a dose of reality I might as well watch the news and do some bookkeeping.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  And the games companies, the ones making the games, disagree. They believe that this toxic behavior is affecting more people than the alternative options are, and so they want to nip it in the bud.
jotm 9y ago
Yeah, I didn't think about that. I just played for fun, not competitiveness.
SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
I think a better solution (better than what currently exists) would entail centralizing gaming profiles which would require you to share profile data across games and game companies so bad behavior in one game is reported to all of your games.

swang 9y ago

> The solution is to block the person you don't like No. This doesn't work in Overwatch. Because Blizzard removed this ability. Right when Overwatch came out, you could select a player's profile and essentially tell Blizzard's algorithm that you didn't want to play with this person anymore (Avoid Player). But Blizzard decided to remove it because they found out a very good Widowmaker (a sniper character) was being excluded by a ton of people so they decided to just remove the feature altogether so that scenario doesn't happen. However, at the time the Widowmaker character was overpowered where Widowmaker should have just gotten a nerf to her abilities (she went through a nerf and a buff since then) but instead, nope, now you can't stop playing with toxic players until they've been banned by Blizzard. Now blocking players just means, I don't want to read messages from them. It doesn't prevent players from throwing matches, which is the biggest issue since you can't "block" bad play

mbrumlow 9y ago
I think the said the "solution is", it does not matter if the functionality exist today. Its more of how the gaming industry should handle these situations. Simply blocking somebody should make it so you can't ever be matched with, or have to communicate with them again. In some games that might be harder said then done, but you could at least make sure you are never on the same team, and that if the player becomes an opponent that its name is obfuscated and they can't chat back.
- always_good 9y ago
  Not very great for the community to make every single person play with a toxic player and then block them. You want to do the work for them. Would you say that's a solution for hackers, too? "Meh, just block them."
  - mbrumlow 9y ago
    The entire problem though is what is 'toxic' is subjective. Today we find this behavior okay, and tomorrow we don't. It could be simply having a MAGA hat on could be 'toxic'. You also have to worry about /toxic/ group behavior. The masses are not always right. So just because somebody has had a lot of people report them does not mean they are toxic. For any of this to work the very behavior that is not allowed must be defined to the T. But anyways, This is not my argument, I was merely trying to correct the assumptions of a post. And suggesting that because some feature does not exist today is not a very good reason why a suggested solution can't work or should not be considered.

nkrisc 9y ago

That's not really a great solution, because it doesn't really work all that well. Toxic people are toxic and they work to find ways to actively subvert the mitigations against their toxic behavior. It puts the onus on the people just trying to have fun to carefully manage and curate their experience just so they can have a good time. These companies care and take these measures because as a player, if I open Overwatch and my first match of the day is full of assholes actively trying to ruin my experience instead of just playing the game, I'm just going to log off and not play anymore.

ShabbosGoy 9y ago

Valve already implemented that in Dota 2 with a hidden tier where game ruiners, bot users/exploiters, etc would be grouped together. They also capped the max ELO you could gain during calibration if you are in that shadowbanned tier. It was calculated based on the number of reports you received in the last n games.

dvlsg 9y ago

Overwatch tried that. People started blocking everyone better than them. In the end, one of the top widowmaker players couldn't find a match, because everyone who didn't want to play against him had blocked him. Actually, I'm not sure block is the word blizzard used. Avoid, maybe? The end result was more or less the same.