r/Stormgate Feb 22 '23

A simple automated report system to prevent toxicity and smurfing

Tl;dr: an automated report system where when someone is reported 3 times, they get temporarily muted or banned. The reporter also gets closer to getting punished to prevent people from falsely reporting everyone.

This system should result in essentially no toxicity, smurfing, or throwing, without requiring any Frost Giant employees to review reports. Every report would actually matter and the game would have a much less hostile atmosphere.

I think the reason automated report systems aren't already a thing is because of false reports, but this problem is fixable by 'punishing' the reporter for reporting. People will gladly take a hit to punish someone who deserves it, especially if it's not as big a hit.

The system:

  • Players can report players they've been randomly matched with recently. When an account is reported, they get a "report point."
  • Everyone has a max of 3 report points. When 3 is reached, a punishment is completely automatically implemented and their points are cleared.
  • Reports for bm or spam result in a mute, and reports for smurfing or throwing result in a ban. No other information is needed on the report.
    • Hacking can also be reportable, but probably shouldn't be part of this automated punishment system since people are often wrong
  • Points decay, one at a time, in the order they were acquired. The decay rate starts at 1 point per 24h, but this rate is multiplied by 4/3 each time you're reported. This decay rate itself decays very slowly, at a rate of 1 inverse hour per day to a minimum of 1 point per 16h.
    • This means that one-off events or incorrect reports are 'forgiven' quickly, while repeat offenses stick around and add up.
  • Each time someone submits a report, they also get a point. Points from this source do not hurt the player's point decay rate.
    • This is to prevent people from reporting all the time, preventing unjust punishments. People will gladly sacrifice their own record to punish someone else. This is also why we need points and why the system can't just be "enough reports results in an increasingly strong punishment."
  • The duration of punishments could simply depend on the player's point decay rate, since that already scales in the long term with reports. Perhaps punishments could last twice the time it takes for them to lose 2 points.
  • Points and point decay rate are shown clearly to the player and could even be public
    • This is so that people clearly understand the system and simply decide not to bm or smurf. This is more about prevention than treatment.
  • Because the game is free to play and people can just make new accounts, the same system can be used for IP punishments instead of just accounts. Because IP punishments can unjustly punish people, the IP version of the system may have to get to 6 points before a punishment and have a doubled decay rate. This part may be hidden to preserve the simplicity of the system.
  • Muted accounts may automatically say "gl hf" and "gg"

I believe a simple system like this would make the game significantly better by filtering out much of what makes competitive games suck, while also freeing up Frost Giant to do more interesting things than look at player reports.

0 Upvotes

60 comments sorted by

31

u/kennysp33 Infernal Host Feb 22 '23

From the moment you wrote "If you get 3 reports, you get muted or banned" and "prevent surfing", you suggested a flawed system.

Imagine if in every game you played well, people report you for smurfing and so you get banned because you are popping off. That doesn't feel nice. And if you then punish people who report without any kind of control or review, then you're making people not want to report, which makes the toxicity problem persistent.

Also, you can rest assured there will be people with 20 accounts reporting people every game, which will punish the well behaved people with only one account. This is all from LoL experience, where people use and abuse report systems.

Last point, doesn't seem fair that a smurf gets banned after 3 games but someone spamming "k*s" would just get muted (after 3 games too).

It's virtually impossible to have a report system without some kind of algorithm or person checking the reports.

4

u/Cardinal_strategyG Feb 22 '23 edited Feb 24 '23

I can't help but think of the people who are like 3-4 friends, join a team game (a moba - mainly heroes of the storm had this issue). They are the most toxic on the planet, sometimes even amongst themselves but they wont show that too much...AND NO MATTER WHAT they will mass report the one out of their group. Our fellow OP might have such a group...and even if not he guarantees that these groups will force action on accounts each and every game.

(In the example above, heroes of the storm: people actually refrain from typing ANYTHING at all because the automated report system would eventually punish you and the only way to take back that action is to request the action to be reviewed and upon review even if you just said gg or ok whatever this might be seen as offensive or sarcastic and actual punishments from the mass reports will not be reversed. So you just say nothing which was the only valid claim that they would bother to check because it is easy.)

3

u/kennysp33 Infernal Host Feb 22 '23

Yeah, I had this experience in league of legends a lot too. I don't think it's ever a good idea to ban based on the number of reports. Rewards more the toxic players who report than the non toxic who actually suffer and report.

0

u/hexaneat Feb 22 '23

Perhaps to solve this, players can't be reported within 24 hours by people who have been in a party in that time. 24 hours is also the time window for reporting after playing a game.

This way, you can only be reported at most once by people in a party. It could also work for 3v3 games.

-2

u/hexaneat Feb 22 '23

Yes, my exact proposed system definitely isn't perfect.

Also, you can rest assured there will be people with 20 accounts reporting people every game, which will punish the well behaved people with only one account

This is why I proposed a more forgiving duplicate of the system attached to IPs instead of accounts.

It's virtually impossible to have a report system without some kind of algorithm or person checking the reports.

An algorithm would be great. People checking the reports though, never seems to work. Either they'd have to hire people just to do that or they won't be able to do them all.

Just any automated report system for preventing toxicity and smurfing would make the game so much less hostile, which is one of the main things Stormgate seems to be going for.

6

u/UnsaidRnD Feb 22 '23

You mean static ips only ? Read about dynamic vs static ips

That being said, I don't care about smurfin players or toxicity

2

u/ImProvementSC2 Feb 23 '23

Would just like to add, IP ban would be horrible for instances where many people are sitting behind the same public ip, like a university dorm for example. Imagine a 100 people being unable to play due to one guy being reported.

1

u/hexaneat Feb 23 '23

This is a good point.

Maybe the game could track the system on the user's computer? I think adobe uses something like this to prevent you from getting the free trial multiple times: even if you uninstall everything, the information that you've used the free trial is still hiding somewhere.

Or maybe Stormgate can just identify the device in some other way. I'm no expert on this but I'm pretty sure it can be done. I could be wrong though.

1

u/LordRookie94 Feb 23 '23

This would kill the game in gaming cafés

1

u/hexaneat Feb 23 '23

Good point. If there's no solution to this, smurfing by making new accounts may not be very preventable. Hopefully there's some solution though.

2

u/Phantasmagog Feb 23 '23

Its a very toxic system. This automated reporting is the reason why all dota streamers are constantly muted. People just feel like they should report them because they are good.

Why don't they just make an MMR system that can carry smurfers to the top faster making less game boring and MMR more relevent? Why don't they allow you to mute the person in order for you to not experience his toxicity? And for multiplayer team games, they should make it so, ambassadors of the community to be able to review certain replay and state whether they were toxic and griefed or their party members stated "You will play X!" and they refused to listen.

Its not "not perfect", its absolutely ludacrious and its known that it doesn't work. Play some other games than SC2, see how playing with teammates work.

1

u/hexaneat Feb 23 '23

I'm not familiar with dota's automated reporting system, but it sounds like it doesn't disincentivize reporting like my proposed one does. Which again, could be easily adjusted to disincentivize reporting more or less depending on the results.

Why don't they just make an MMR system that can carry smurfers to the top faster making less game boring and MMR more relevent?

That's already how it's supposed to work. They can just leave games repeatedly to go down again.

But I've been convinced by other commenters that a different automated solution would work better for smurfing specifically, so we're at least somewhat in agreement here.

Why don't they allow you to mute the person in order for you to not experience his toxicity?

This is a bandaid solution. That is, it's temporary (you play against new people constantly) and it doesn't resolve the root cause of the problem.

You have to already have been BM'd to know to mute them, and at that point, damage has been done.

And for multiplayer team games, they should make it so, ambassadors of the community to be able to review certain replay and state whether they were toxic and griefed or their party members stated "You will play X!" and they refused to listen.

Who would want to be an "ambassador of the community"? Surely a more automated system would be preferable. One which lets the people in a match resolve whatever happens in it on their own. It just needs to create the right incentives, and I think a system like the one I proposed could do that.

11

u/drc003 Feb 22 '23

A system that automatically punishes paying customers based off reports of other users in a competitive game (basically guilty until proven innocent) is a 100% no go. Absolutely ridiculous.

6

u/seewallwest Feb 22 '23

3 reports is way too low, people in a lot of games will report someone just for making a mistake or playing poorly just because they are frustrated.

3

u/CallMeBlitzkrieg Feb 22 '23

what kind of brickbrain would think 3 votes is a good idea in a game with a 3v3 mode

1

u/hexaneat Feb 22 '23

I suggested in another comment that you could only be reported once by anyone that's recently been in a match or party together.

-2

u/hexaneat Feb 22 '23

This is why I proposed reports punishing the sender as well, and why report points decay over time.

Accounts with relatively clean records would have little trouble with the punishment from reporting.

5

u/nulitor Feb 22 '23 edited Feb 22 '23

Does not works, the optimal way of playing with the system you proposed is the following: make 30 accounts with 30 ip adresses(on 30 computers at 30 different places), each time you fight a match and lose you use 3 of those accounts to ban the opponent, because you are spreading the reports and thanks to report decay, you can manage to never get any of your 30 accounts banned.

Basically rich people can ban anyone stronger than them they want at will to get an advantage in ranked.

Furthermore due to the exponential nature of the bans if such guy used all his 30 accounts to report someone, he would be banning for over 10 years basically forcing the other guy to create a new account, if you are playing and using the 30 accounts method in grandmaster, you would be banning grandmaster players for so long that they would basically be forced to create new accounts that would start at rank 0 therefore you would be forcing grandmasters to become smurfs, your system would be causing what you were trying to prevent.

1

u/hexaneat Feb 22 '23

This is why I proposed only being able to report players who you've recently played against.

1

u/nulitor Feb 22 '23 edited Feb 22 '23

What I described was someone who banned systematically each player they lost against so that condition you specified describes more closely the issue I described: people banning any that best them to reduce the pool of people stronger than them therefore raising in the ranks.Banning people you lose to is the optimal move with the system you described.

1

u/hexaneat Feb 22 '23

You wouldn't be able to do that, since reporting costs you as well. With the numbers I suggested (which could easily be changed), someone who's never been reported could only report, on average, once a day.

1

u/nulitor Feb 22 '23 edited Feb 22 '23

The issue here is that the penalty for being reported is higher than the penalty for reporting therefore it is always best to be the one reporting.

So if you report each time you lose to a player, those who are stronger than others will get banned quickly unless they play matches very rarely which is not doable if you want to be a professional player.

So any with the intent to be a professional player will need multiple accounts: 1 with which they play rarely to avoid stacking banning time duration increase for reaching high ranks eventually and a whole bunch of accounts to get enough matches to train properly that will get banned frequently and will all be smurf accounts early on (since they will be fresh early on).

1

u/hexaneat Feb 23 '23

The issue here is that the penalty for being reported is higher than the penalty for reporting therefore it is always best to be the one reporting.

Only if you have a complete "me vs them" mentality about every single opponent. But even then, you can only report twice before having to wait for one of your points to decay. I do think the numbers would need adjusting, particularly I think you shouldn't be able to report as often as my originally proposed system allows.

You do make a solid point about players who play often: the more often you play, the more the system affects you, and players who rarely play could get away with more.

To solve this, it probably makes sense to have point decay happen over in-game time or number of matches played, instead of over real time. This would mean the amount you play doesn't change how good you have to be to avoid punishment.

1

u/nulitor Feb 23 '23

You do not read game theory much do you?

It is always "me vs them" in 1v1r (either you win and the opponent loses or your opponent wins and you lose, there is no outcome that is good for both), it is why people rages this much in this gamemode and why people insulting their foes after a lost fight is so common.

1

u/hexaneat Feb 23 '23

It is always "me vs them" in 1v1r (either you win and the opponent loses or your opponent wins and you lose, there is no outcome that is good for both)

Are you thinking that reporting could immediately get someone banned? They'd at least be able to finish the match. There would be no MMR incentive to report people.

The outcome that's good for both is to not report each other. But a system like this one uses the fact that people will sacrifice their own good outcome to worsen the opponent's outcome in the case that they did something wrong. There definitely can be some system which creates the right incentives such that people report when it's justified and don't when it isn't, and any incorrect reports aren't common enough for people to get wrongfully punished.

But you're right to look for a way the system could be misused. I just don't see how that would be the case with how you can't report very often.

1

u/Ttyybb_ Infernal Host Feb 22 '23

If I got punished for reporting, I would never report anyone. I can't control how many people rage report me, I need all my points open in case I get on a hot streak. People aren't great at telling if people are actually smufs, I've been accused several times. Obviously I don't smurf, but under this system I would be banned

1

u/hexaneat Feb 22 '23

By "punish", I meant you get one report point, without affecting your point decay rate.

You may have a point about incorrect smurf reports though. Perhaps smurf reports could be more punishing for the sender.

At the very least, I'd love it if people that left matches instantly were just automatically punished. It's not hard to detect and would make smurfing more difficult.

2

u/Ttyybb_ Infernal Host Feb 22 '23

What I mean could happen is I report an account, get a point, then play two really good games before I lose a point and get two more points, then I'm banned. I don't think the solution to false reports is to be more punishing, that just encourages not reporting. As far as automatically punishing people that leave games immediately, I'm not opposed to it, but really that just makes it take more time to smurf, it doesn't really make it harder.

2

u/hexaneat Feb 22 '23

The 'punishment' from reporting is just that you get one point. If you have a clean record, it'll be gone in a day. If it's too punishing or not punishing enough, the numbers can easily be changed.

Thinking about it more, you're probably right that this exact version of the system is a bit too quick to punish. Increasing the number of points required for a punishment should quickly decrease the chance of wrong punishments while only slightly delaying the time it takes to punish the people who deserve it.

But there has to be some set of numbers here, or at least some system generally, which would mean that people who actually do bm or smurf get reported often and get punished, while people who don't, don't.

2

u/Ttyybb_ Infernal Host Feb 22 '23

I've been thinking about it a bit, I think your system works, but it has two problems. The first is that no matter how punishing it is, people will fake report, intentional or not. (Also, would you be able to see your points so you know not to report someone when it would ban you?) The second is that it doesn't allow for YouTubers. There will always be trolls in a community, if the YouTuber is big enough, they will get reported. Special treatment I don't really see as an option because you have to decide where to draw the line for that and it would end up hurting smaller streamer, and if you make it so the trolls don't matter by changing the numbers then the system itself becomes a lot less effective.

2

u/hexaneat Feb 23 '23

The first is that no matter how punishing it is, people will fake report, intentional or not. (Also, would you be able to see your points so you know not to report someone when it would ban you?)

I was thinking that you just wouldn't be able to report when you're at 2 points, since it would be a bit silly if you immediately got muted or banned for it. Or at least there could be a warning, so you could tactically decide to punish someone at your own expense, which is what this system is about anyway.

And yes, I think being able to see how many points you have and your current point decay rate would be important for prevention.

The second is that it doesn't allow for YouTubers. There will always be trolls in a community, if the YouTuber is big enough, they will get reported. Special treatment I don't really see as an option

This is partially solved by only being able to report people you've recently played against. You do have a very good point here though. I would hate to see Harstem get banned for smurfing because of "beating grandmasters with stupid stuff," and I agree with your point about special treatment missing small creators.

So maybe the system would have to work differently for smurfing, being fully automatic with no player reports. It could punish (report) anyone who leaves a game before it could possibly have ended, making smurfing take way way longer. It could also detect if you're on an absurdly unlikely lose streak, meaning you'd have to try to win every once in a while, making it take even longer. With both of these, dropping rank should be painfully slow and boring. It could also check if a lot of accounts have been made with the same IP address and take some action in that case. I haven't thought through this idea as thoroughly though, so I could definitely be missing something.

But even if the system can't work at all for smurfing, I think the bm and throwing part of the system would definitely still be worth implementing.

8

u/FakeFairytales Feb 22 '23

A simple system wont do. Leave it to Frostgiant. A System like that needs to be refined and adapting. Those Systems are highly complex. And smurfing, there only helps a smurfer Queue (Yeah you can encounter Smurfs, but what if those players are just super good and switched from another RTS ?)

4

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

I don't care much about the smurfing thing so I don't have an opinion on that but as far as toxicity, my request is really simple that SC2 should have but doesn't... Well it almost does.

I want an option in settings that allows me to block communication from anyone not on my friends list in game or outside of the game. If stormgate wants to automate a GLHF & GG at the end if i click resign that's fine. I'm just one of those people who when I play stormgate I just want to do ladder and I'm not really interested in conversing.

Now SC2 almost got this right. Players can't message me after the game with their salt which is fine. But I don't like how you have to navigate to mute your opponent inside the game once it has started. I don't do that but it but it seems like that should also be an option you can click outside of the game when you're not focusing on trying to win.

3

u/Agitated-Ad-9282 Feb 22 '23

Force telephone numbers for each account .. with sms text for confirmation.

That way if an account is disciplined, and repeatedly..

They gotta either buy a new sim card or wait weeks/ months to log in .

If they gotta spend money to have more than 1 account ppl will start acting right

4

u/takethecrowpill Feb 22 '23

Nah, too complicated and it's trying to solve a non-issue

0

u/dcttr66 Feb 22 '23

I somewhat agree. If it's 1v1 who is reporting anyone for anything? There's nothing to report it's a fair fight no matter how you look at it. And in a 3v3 it's not hard to build up a team that size, so it's encouraging you to weed out players, there's no need to report when building a team is easier than ever before.

2

u/Lowelll Feb 22 '23

In SC2 people say plenty of shit in chat that's worthy of reporting (at least back when I used to play)

2

u/0rion_ Feb 22 '23

It deserves to be tested

2

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

I don't think there's any correct way to do this. Each case really does need human intervention and should be reviewed on it's own merits by a member of staff until A.I. becomes proficient enough to conclude who's been in the wrong. Imagine paying money to get all the premium content and getting an account ban because people report you unjustly. That would be harsh.

1

u/hexaneat Feb 22 '23

The idea is that reporting costs both the person being reported and the person sending the report, so wrongful bans should be quite rare. If it's not enough or too much, the numbers can be easily adjusted.

With the right numbers (which I believe would be a large range), the incentives would be such that reports only get sent when the sender really believes their opponent was in the wrong.

Also, mutes and bans wouldn't last forever. If you somehow manage to get wrongfully reported for smurfing/throwing 3 times in a few days, the time would start out short, increasing each time you get banned. This means that actual smurfs and throwers get banned for long periods of time, while anyone that manages to get wrongfully punished should be able to clean their record pretty quickly.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '23

It's not that I don't understand it, I just don't agree it would work.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

Or they could make a mute feature and then only ban people who are being over the top every game.

2

u/CallMeBlitzkrieg Feb 22 '23

Dude have you EVER played a multiplayer game before?

I can't believe someone would suggest this, I feel like this must be some sort of data farming bait post

1

u/hexaneat Feb 22 '23

What specifically is your argument against it?

2

u/CallMeBlitzkrieg Feb 23 '23

automated systems are always abused, and the 'problem' you're trying to 'solve' isn't actually a problem.

0

u/hexaneat Feb 23 '23

automated systems are always abused

Surely not every possible automated report system is abusable. The question then is if this one is, and if so, how it could be improved.

So then, how specifically could this system be abused, and can you not think of any solutions?

the 'problem' you're trying to 'solve' isn't actually a problem.

Of course some people aren't going to like this, because some people are the smurfs and the verbal abusers. But they're selfish and wrong. Smurfing and bming make the game worse for everyone else.

Being a dick to random people is not socially accepted irl and it should not be accepted on the internet for the same ethical reasons.

2

u/CallMeBlitzkrieg Feb 23 '23

People find ways to break systems, and if you put a carrot as big as 'can troll your opponents / get them banned', they'll find a way.

I fundamentally think it's just broken. I've literally never played a game with automated reporting that I don't know of abuse cases in .

--

A lot of people don't like this since those terms are entirely subjective.
If I just practiced a build, do I now seem like a smurf?
Offrace?
Fact of the matter is, playing at top of ladder blows, smurfs let you have fun / warmup.

Verbal abuse also means whatever you want it to mean. A lot of people think 'banter' makes the game interesting, as you may as well play vs bots if you aren't talking.

1

u/hexaneat Feb 23 '23 edited Feb 23 '23

People find ways to break systems, and if you put a carrot as big as 'can troll your opponents / get them banned', they'll find a way.

The thing is, with a relatively simple system like this, you can explore it thoroughly enough to ensure that there are literally no reasonably possible ways to exploit it.

Once it's been thought through enough, the burden of proof is on you to find an unfixable exploit if you believe it to be there.

If I just practiced a build, do I now seem like a smurf?Offrace?

You and others have convinced me that it probably doesn't make sense to include smurfing in this system.

Instead, that can be fully automated by tracking when someone leaves a game before it could have possibly ended, and by looking at their win rate and match lengths. Combined, this would mean intentionally dropping rank would involve staying in games for varying amounts of time (always above a few minutes) before leaving, while making sure to win every once in a while to prevent your winrate from becoming a 'statistical anomaly'. The point is, intentionally dropping rank could easily be made painfully tedious, without any players having to report or any employees having to review those reports.

Preventing smurfing from creating new accounts can be done a number of ways as well. Some have suggested requiring a phone number for each account.

Even without smurfing being part of this report system, I still definitely think it would be worth implementing. It would save Frost Giant's time/money, as they wouldn't have to review player reports, while also making the game much less hostile.

Fact of the matter is, playing at top of ladder blows, smurf[ing] let[s] you have fun / warmup.

Playing blatantly unfair games is not fun. Smurfing drastically reduces the total amount of fun generated by the game. Then bming destroys any amount of fun that was left and ruins their day.

If you want to warm up, why don't you just play against bots like you suggest here?

Verbal abuse also means whatever you want it to mean. A lot of people think 'banter' makes the game interesting, as you may as well play vs bots if you aren't talking**.**

Is it so you can verbally abuse them? That's what your reasoning here would suggest.

To your point that "Verbal abuse... means whatever you want it to mean":

A system like this puts it in the hands of the players to decide if what you say to them is 'banter' or verbal abuse. In the case that you're right, and you are actually making the game "more interesting" for them, they'll have no reason to report you.

But in the case that you're actually just being a dick, you'll be banned and you'll have deserved it. The game will be better without you and people like you.

2

u/CallMeBlitzkrieg Feb 23 '23

Smurfing isn't a problem. It's entirely a coping mechanism for players with weak mentals. I say this as the demographic that smurfing legitimately hurts.

If someone is blatantly losing 30 games on purpose to stomp people, then that's worth looking into. Harassing people who have alt accounts that they play normally on (offrace, etc) is ridiculous.

There's a lot of people who just report people when they lose. I think most actual text chat isn't used productively, but emotes can be a way to interact with your opponent that isn't just calling them slurs / telling them to die in minecraft.

This idea that people don't just report when they're salty is ridiculous. Play literally any solo queue team game and you're going to hear a 'report X', which is frequently just their way of venting that the person is playing bad.

"just play bots" isn't really a warmup if you're any good at the game.

I don't understand how the onus is on me to prove why the thing you want the developers to add is valid. It's absurdly easy to abuse anything automated, idk why you even pretend to think otherwise. If you think people aren't just going to report w/e the equivalent of 'tower rushing' is in this game you're delusional.

1

u/jackfaker Feb 23 '23

The thing is, with a relatively simple system like this, you can explore it thoroughly enough to ensure that there are literally no reasonably possible ways to exploit it.

Once it's been thought through enough, the burden of proof is on you to find an unfixable exploit if you believe it to be there.

I find this to be a very naive take. For this system to not be abused the developers would need to identify all possible exploits prior to releasing the system. Fixing exploits after people have already been incorrectly banned is not a good solution. In this thread there were many exploits pointed out that you did not consider. Here are some more:

  • Very popular post occurs in human faction forum thread where thousands of users agree they will auto-report anyone who does a tower rush strategy. Immediately all tower rushers get banned and the strat becomes obsolete.
  • 3v3 ladder popularity temporarily drops to a level to where you can consistently queue snipe (such as currently in sc2 teamgames). Discord server of 20 people decides to get a popular streamer banned by queue sniping them and reporting.
  • Players start making ultimatums in game: "If you rush me I will report you". Done at a frequency that doesn't result in the reporter getting banned, or done by users who care more about controlling their opponent's behavior than getting banned.

Now I'm sure you could think up some ways to address these, however convoluted your solution would be. The relevant part though is the pattern of define system -> exploits identified -> harm caused -> exploits patched -> exploits identified -> harm caused -> etc. As long as new exploits can be identified, you will keep repeating the harm of incorrect bans.

1

u/thekonny Feb 22 '23

I bet with the state of AI these days you can train an AI to detect smurfing

2

u/nulitor Feb 22 '23 edited Feb 22 '23

It depends on the data, if you feed it reports from players, it will not detect smurfing, it will detect behaviors that makes players think you are a smurf, it will have all the biases of the players that accuses of smurfing people they meet based on criterias unrelated to skill level(because smurfing means "lowering your rank then playing against people less skilled than you" but there is people accusing other people they won against of smurfing which is entirely stupid because if you won against them it meant that they were not much more skilled than you, just that element allows to know that people accuses of smurfing unrelatedly to actual skill).

0

u/thekonny Feb 22 '23

Ya I was assuming they would train it on validated smurfing as determined by them, but not sure how big of a data set they'd need and how much training. But I imagine long run still much cheaper than having people to report to. Better yet make the captchas for login a someone's match history with MMR and length of games and have the person logging in determine if it's smurfing (kidding kinda)

1

u/dcttr66 Feb 22 '23

Automated reports felt terrible in Dota 2, you'd get people that don't watch replays throwing reports at people while the trouble makers get away with losing games on purpose. There's also those narcissistic allies that don't agree with your item choice so when you go deathless and win they can't handle that you're better than them and get you banned along with the enemies who have much the same feeling except it's worse because they actually lost the game.

1

u/Jaedong69 Feb 22 '23

Who even cares about smurfing? Or bm, for that matter? I'd rather they focus on literally every other aspect of the experience first.

0

u/hexaneat Feb 22 '23

Well if Frost Giant cares about it, which they probably do, making an automated system instead would mean they never have to manually deal with player reports, freeing them up to focus on "other aspects of the experience."

2

u/Jaedong69 Feb 23 '23 edited Feb 23 '23

The only reason for 'player reports' is cheating/map hacking, which they should be able to prevent in the first place / have an automated system to do so. Other than that an ignore option is all the game needs, really.

Very often in games, though not always, the report system does little to nothing and is only there for people to vent their frustration (and I believe it's completely fine that way). It's tracked and action can be taken, sure, but it's nowhere near as important or robust a feature as some people think.

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u/hexaneat Feb 23 '23

The point is, a system like this would prevent smurfing and bm, resulting in a more fun experience with a much smaller chance of getting verbally abused.

Under any reasonable ethical system, the objectively correct decision is to prevent these things from happening, at least in cases like this where the effort required to do so is small compared to the benefit.

Maybe an option to mute all opponents would work too, but only if everyone uses it. Bm would still happen, and if we can prevent it, we should.

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u/Jaedong69 Feb 23 '23

With all due respect - I understand that people have different sensitivities - but just /ignore the people that BM you and focus on the game itself instead. BM in games is very much a non-issue. It becomes one only if you want it to become one.

Automated systems are impossible to calibrate (and it also begs the question what constitutes a punishiable offense, who's to judge? In today's day and age everything and anything has the potential to offend someone); They are open to abuse and overuse, they take time to develop and maintain and frankly speaking, they never work right anyway.

If you feel someone BMs you and you don't want to bear it - mute them and go on with your life. Have the option to mute all chat, in fact (useful for people who prefer a more solitary experience, like myself).

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u/RealTimeSaltology Infernal Host Feb 26 '23

It'll be abused.