Toxicity Report #4
Hello,
It’s Omeda_Zuzu with the news from Player Experience Team!
It’s been a while since the last time we updated you on the state of toxicity in Predecessor, so we’re back to fill you in on all the details of how things are currently going, and tell you all about some new improvements we've been cooking up over the last few months!
Upcoming Toxicity Changes
We're aiming to introduce a number of improvements to combat toxicity in the near future - starting with some of the biggest toxicity pain points that we’ve seen reported within the community, whilst also increasing visibility and transparency on action we take against the players who ruin the experience for others.
What we will describe below is only part of our efforts to tackle toxicity. There are already more systems in development and the ones we’re talking about today will be constantly monitored, built upon and adjusted as necessary.
AFK/Disconnect Detection
One of the most infamous ways to ruin a match is to go idle in base, or “AFK”.
With our new systems coming soon, ruining the game this way will be much more difficult.
If the game detects no activity for a period of time at the start of the game, the match will stop and the offending player will be appropriately penalized. The match itself will not be recorded and the rest of the players will not suffer any of the downsides of the forfeited match: no VP loss, or undeserved bans for those who have not gone AFK.
For AFKs happening later in the game, our approach will be different.
The game will go on, but the player who has been identified as an AFK'er will not be able to vote in a surrender vote, which will remove their power to hold their team hostage in a match if they wish to leave early.
In case the team wins, even despite the efforts of the AFK’er to sabotage the game, the AFK’er will not receive their share of rewards - in addition to being punished for their disruptive behaviour.
This system is subject to change and fine-tuning based on data and feedback we receive.
There will also be changes to surrendering mechanics in general to make it more difficult to sabotage the game by repeatedly initiating surrender votes.
We’re introducing changes to surrender timers with 1.2 : we’re increasing the time between surrender votes from 1.5 minutes to 5.
In Ranked there are no limits to how many times the vote can be initiated.
In Standard each player gets only a single opportunity to initiate a surrender each game. Use it wisely.
Automatic AFK Punishments
We want to underline that our new AFK detection system will automatically sanction players without the need for human review. That means that the offending player will receive a suspension or ban.
Report Feedback
We are aware that currently the in-game reports feel underwhelming due to the lack of feedback to confirm whether or not the report was actioned.
We’re happy to announce that this will be changing soon, with the implementation of a new system that will let you know once your in-game report has contributed to an action taken against the reported player.
We hope that by increasing visibility over reporting outcomes we're able to both validate your efforts for contributing to a healthier community whilst also better showcasing the effectiveness of the system, something we know many would like to know more about.
We’re hoping to get this feature ready in the next few weeks.
Chat
We believe that chat moderation is in a good state - our AI solution, GGWP, has been in place since the beginning of 2023, and it has been taking action against toxic players for over a year now.
That's a long time for both our team and the AI to learn more about player behaviour. The AI itself has gotten pretty good at differentiating between acceptable in-game banter and purposefully malicious communications, and we've taken on board player feedback during this time to fine tune the severity of certain phrases to further improve it's differentiation.
We know that it'll never be perfect however due to the constant evolution of communication, so expect continued improvements as time goes on.
We are also happy to report that we have seen very few false positives in the last couple of months.
We are aware that some creative players do sometimes manage to find ways to get around the chat restrictions and we regularly adjust the system to be able to detect these scenarios better. That being said, we appreciate your reports greatly and they have been very helpful in aiding that process. We’re aware that there are still some rare instances of players saying hurtful things and we’re doing our best to keep them to an absolute minimum. If you see players trying to dodge the system to be abusive, don’t hesitate to report them, we’ll take care of them.
As there is some misinformation circulating about how chat moderation works in Predecessor, here's a little refresher:
Our system is reputation-based: which means the player’s penalty is calculated on the entirety of their in-game behaviour so far. If they were a good egg and this is their first time being toxic, their penalty would be shorter than someone who said the same thing but has a history of consistent negative behaviour.
Our tool covers 18 languages - being toxic in languages other than English will also result in a penalty.
While we welcome your feedback on many aspects of our game, let it be known that we don’t plan to change our stance about the use of derogatory language, threats and verbal abuse in Predecessor - we will not tolerate such things in our game, nor should our players.
Toxicity in response to toxicity is still toxicity and action will be taken accordingly. Please don’t let the toxic players lower your reputation - if you spot abuse, please report it, mute the player, and let us take care of it.
Player reports
We are well aware that in a competitive game such as ours, emotions can fly high and the temptation to ruin the game can on some occasions be too strong for some individuals, to the detriment of everybody else's experience. We’ve spoken about our plans for the near future - let’s talk about what is happening right now.
How do we handle reports at the moment?
We process all player reports you submit. Some of them are actioned automatically, whereas others are reviewed by humans and action is taken accordingly, once their offence has been validated.
Which way of reporting is better? In-game report or support portal report?
Please use the in-match and post-match reporting systems for all player reports. These direct reports are immediately collected and processed by our anti-toxicity systems, and are necessary to trigger the Report Feedback system to inform you when action has been taken.
Can one report contribute to somebody’s ban?
In the most extreme cases, yes, but in majority of normal instances we need to see the pattern of bad behaviour reported by different players before we revoke someone’s access to the game.
Like in most games, just because somebody reports you doesn’t mean that action will be taken.
We also check player’s individual circumstances - new players for example can sometimes be reported for not being good at the game and while we appreciate this could be frustrating for more experienced players, it’s not a bannable offence.
Will you share specific details of punishments for reported players?
Our goal is to punish offending players, not to incite witch-hunts. We believe restricting one’s access to the game is punishment enough - the point of it all being to stop the offending player from ruining your game.
We hope that the incoming feedback system for in-game reporting will help to provide enough clarity to ensure players know when their reports have been dealt with.
What are the bannable offences?
You can be banned for various lengths of time for any of the following:
Going AFK in the game
Evading an existing ban
Cheating
Impersonating members of the Omeda Dev Team
Intentionally feeding
Intentionally ruining a match
Penalties are shorter for first offences, but can ramp up as far as permanent suspension.
While chat offences will usually result in chat penalties, in extreme cases a chat phrase can be a reason for a ban on its own. If a player is toxic in the chat in addition to displaying a game-ruining behaviour, they might also receive a harsher penalty.
Are there any wrongly applied bans?
At the moment, all the gameplay bans are manually applied by a human - action is only taken if there’s solid proof that the player in question is displaying bad behaviour - consistently or to an extreme degree. There isn’t much room for error in our reviews.
Why are the results of my report not immediately visible?
As we mentioned, there’s an entire verification process that needs to take place before a player can be penalized. We are working on speeding things up, so watch this space.
How do you make sure that systems can’t be abused and used to troll innocent players?
We have several systems in place that prevent the abuse of our moderation process. Since the system is also based in GGWP, player reputation comes into play once again - though it should be noted that it’s a separate system from the chat one.
We have a way of differentiating between reliable reporters and people who might or might not be trolling. Reports made by players who have accurately reported bad behaviour in the past can hold more weight than those of players who spam reports every match.
And that’s it! For now.
Thanks to all of you for your feedback so far! We'll continue to tweak and improve our systems to ensure the best experience possible for all of our players. We can’t wait to see how your experience changes following the implementation of the AFK detection systems. As always, we’re eager to hear your feedback and thoughts!
- Omeda_Zuzu, Player Experience Manager
