Post by Eorl @ 03:03pm 29/05/13 | 78 Comments
After some discussion internally, we reached the decision that it seemed in the best interest of the Dota community to not push away players who actually enjoyed the game. As a consequence, this meant restricting the ability for some members of the community to say whatever they want. To put it another way, we only want people to quit playing if they actually just don’t like the game. That thinking led us to the current communication ban system. Its goal is to reduce the toxicity that occurs verbally or via text chat, and as a result, to avoid causing players to quit the game solely due to negative communication experiences.To help players understand just how the new system has helped "cleanse" the community, the blog post details several interesting statistics including a "35% drop in negative communication interactions." According to the stats, less than 1% of the active player base (players who have played Dota 2 in the last month) are currently banned and of those players who do receive bans 60% go on to modify their behavior, stopping further bans.
The statistics also note that total reports are down more than 30%, further proving to Valve that their new communication system is definitely helping their community.
Overall, we’re happy with how the system is proceeding. The communication ban system was an attempt to remove a specific set of behaviors in the community, and given its harshness and the change in expectations it engendered, it was always going to be something that was met with criticism. As is often the case, there’s still a lot of work to do, but the early results are promising.While it seems the MOBA genre will always be a victim of negative behaviour, it is nice to see proof that systems like the one implemented in DOTA 2 actually do have an impact on the community. Make sure you check out the full blog post for a very thorough rundown of the implemented system.
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Posted 09:19pm 29/5/13
I copped a ban, no clue why. They could at least specify the game so i know what was said cause i dont recall any abuse apart from calling a noob a noob. Maybe if the matchmaking was a bit better balanced games wouldnt be 4v5 stomps cause there is a f***wit ruining the game for 4 other team mates.
Also, they could at least have banned players post a default message like "sorry, ive got a communication ban" so we actually know what the f*** is going on. Until i knew such a ban existed i assumed they were non english speaking or just total f***wits.
Posted 09:24pm 29/5/13
Posted 09:42pm 29/5/13
Posted 09:52pm 29/5/13
Posted 10:34pm 29/5/13
Plus, the f*** would fpot n kos know? You guys even play DOTA?
Posted 10:56pm 29/5/13
Posted 11:11pm 29/5/13
Now i abuse LoLf***.
Posted 11:37pm 29/5/13
A) chances are people have used up all their reports and can't or are more selective about reporting people and thus effecting the stats.
B) bans are usually for only 24 hours. (how is that going to modify your behaviour?)
Now I have noticed leavers and raged taper off but in game abuse seems to have gotten worse.
As soon as your team starts to lose without fail someone starts abusing someone else whereas when you are winning it is high 5's all around and everyone gets along.
Posted 12:05am 30/5/13
It hasn't effected me at all. I've noticed people are less d***ish though, which is good.
Posted 01:03am 30/5/13
Sounds like teamwork anywhere or on anything.
Also, Dav0 seems like an abuser so I can only imagine the ban is working as intended! ;)
Posted 06:27am 30/5/13
I try not to be abusive. If we're tapering off and end up losing I wont flame them in game, I just b**** to a friend over steam chat. Generally I try to give some constructive criticism where possible. I'm no pro, but sometimes you end up with people who are new. I mean, being told you are a noob and stuff doesn't help you improve, but explaining best places to ward and some tricks I've learned with certain chars does.
Fortunately I've found a bunch of chill guys to play with so no one gets mad at anyone any more. It's all rainbows and sunshine for everyone.
Posted 07:40am 30/5/13
These sorts of practices are great, but for those of us who have been running game servers, long long long overdue. The one megacommunity that games like this have is great for the game publisher to control, but it means there's no low level community enforcement possible to filter out troublemakers on a local scale.
Posted 08:04am 30/5/13
Posted 08:10am 30/5/13
Dota was full of it in the day. Most of those a******* went to HoN and LOL was pretty clean.
Now LOLs being infected a bit and it's good to see them taking action.
The honour system is excellent too. As trog said, a system to enforce good behaviour was long overdue and I'm glad devs are actually taking note it really does affect game experience.
Posted 08:50am 30/5/13
The Riot guys did a great talk about this at GDC this year - and, even better, it's one of the few one they've made available for free! Definitely worth a watch - they have a bunch of PhD guys doing cool research on changing player behaviour en masse:
http://gdcvault.com/play/1017940/The-Science-Behind-Shaping-Player
It was a great talk and provides great insight into how games companies are going to be managing online behaviour in the future - I definitely encourage you to check it out.
Again it's the sort of thing that we were doing on GameArena like 10 years ago - just more organised and more effective (because they have so many more resources available to them).
Get used to seeing these sorts of systems!
Posted 09:53am 30/5/13
the game has the most amazingly steep learning curve and every situation is so dependent on different factors that bad decisions are bound to happen.
good play also forces mistakes. getting smashed early in lane and the opposition snowballing will force you to make mistakes and dumb plays- that's the nature of the game. if your team gets on a roll it feels like you're playing an individual A game but that's generally only because the pressure forcing the opposition to s*** the bed and you're doing the same as always.
playing with four people with mics who like to have a laugh and can actually communicate what they're doing and when they're doing it makes for such a drastically more enjoyable experience even if you lose the game. had so many horrible winning games but that were completely lacking in fun just because there was no communication except for raging.
congratulate your team mates for good plays, thank people for supporting well and encourage them when they're being s*** on. you feel bad enough for doing something bad without being called a f***wit. being told bad luck pal- don't sweat it, can make such a difference to the psyche and recover a terrible game. being told to uninstall dota and kill yourself doesn't really inspire someone to help the team.
Posted 10:34am 30/5/13
Yeh this.
Story time!
I had a game the other day that was pretty close that I lost as Sven, I had decent farm and was doing OK. Timbersaw was getting lots of kills because they'd kite me a lot and he'd finish them off. All good, I made up farm from jungle had BKB and MKB and all sorts of KBs and was holding my own (like 5-6-15 or something right).
Anyway the game moves on and once I had BKB I was getting kited all over the map in every team fight (before that, stacks on disables Sven!). We had no disable aside from my stun and luna's mini, so my job was basically becoming to try and catch a few in my stun as an opener and then chase away the damage dealers.
We lost, Luna and our other midgame carry went like 3-12 and I stayed pretty much even, Timbersaw had a nice fat KDA and got self righteous, lost his s*** all over the place at me. I admit that being kited so much that my play looked like s*** but with 2 enemy invis heroes, no dust and no wards it was always going to look like s*** and there wasn't much I could do about it. Ultimately they brought a better team game, we didn't counter their abilities, and that's why we lost ... but this ragey porkchop KSing freak decided Sven was to blame.
The little message that popped up a few hours later about action taken was nice though :)
Posted 11:32am 30/5/13
Posted 12:29pm 30/5/13
hahah jokes.
Posted 01:41am 31/5/13
And no, i have no interest in playing with LoLf***. The fact trog n tdog appear to be well versed in their ban system suggests to me they should stick to what they know. Ive played DOTA since War3 mod days so im used to the abuse aspect. To me its part of the game. F*****g love it.
EDIT. Played 5 games tonight, first games in about a month. As people mentioned, the rage and s*** seems to have been eliminated. Im surprised.
Posted 03:52am 31/5/13
Posted 06:52am 31/5/13
Nearly 400 wins, they're right.
lol, u are just noob at comm ban meta
Posted 07:18am 31/5/13
I would like to see an option about surrendering a game, let me set the scene.
Pudge and QoP both fighting over mid, after the first wave QoP proceeds to just intentionally feed about half a dozen times before deciding that she will then try to play properly - with moments of feeding thrown in. We all reported her for intentional feeding, both teams apparently.
The issue is that it's less than 5 minutes into the game, and the game is so clearly over. So our options are 1) Quit and get put into low priority by taking an abandon or 2) Try to keep playing and then after waiting 35 minutes lose the game.
I understand why the developers don't want a surrender option, but surely if you were to have 8 out of the 10 players or so agree to the surrender I don't see the harm. Now I must admit that the situation above doesn't happen very often, but when it does happen it is AWFUL.
Are there stiffer penalties for people like this - other than being in low priority pool? Are people being banned or temporarily having their accounts disabled yet?
Posted 07:29am 31/5/13
So, Teamspeak is unfiltered, but what is in game is typically quite filtered and not too bad (there are exceptions of course). The point is rage towards team mates is really really pointless, if they are 'noobs' or useless, then you're better of trying to offer advice and suggestions...some people will listen and the game will get better for it, others won't and you just need to accept that and move on.
I would suggest the reason you got banned DeadlyDav0 was because you were being abusive. Just because you may not have found it excessive doesn't mean it was appreciated by the PEOPLE copping the flack.
Posted 07:55am 31/5/13
Posted 08:01am 31/5/13
Posted 08:23am 31/5/13
Dota2 simply takes up too much time for me. After a gaming session it feels like I haven't played much and I just want to play more games.
Posted 08:25am 31/5/13
The fact that you were comm. banned and decided that you would rather stop playing a game completely than play and not be allowed to abuse people shows that the system is far from "f*****g flawed" and is actually working very well.
Quoting Zapo for truth:
Posted 10:57am 31/5/13
Posted 11:02am 31/5/13
I've found it to be the complete opposite. In LoL it is very easy to know when the game is done and dusted, especially in the first 15 minutes. In Dota 2 though I've found it can vary between knowing when the game is done to finding 25 minutes later one push can change the whole battleground.
Dota 2 seems to have much more varied gameplay and outcome compared to LoL, that is for sure. Though I definitely would like a surrender button just to help me get out of games that I know are done but have to keep going to "win". Would allow for a quicker uptake in game matches.
Posted 11:02am 31/5/13
I think that sort of behaviour and its toleration in big game networks is a much bigger, realer social problem than "violence". Failing to discourage makes it extremely unpleasant not just for noobs but for regulars who are there to just play the game and I am sure that that sort of implicitly tolerated behaviour encourages people to act like that outside of game servers as well, whether it's in other areas of their online existence or IRL.
All that said it doesn't bother me in Dota 2 that much because the instant someone abuses me and looks like they're going to continue I just mute them, report them, forget they exist and play on. I try to only play with at least 2 other friends to try to reduce the chance I'm going to get stuck with randoms that are idiots.
Posted 11:55am 31/5/13
I seem to go on big win and loss streaks, never really just scattered randomly. I feel like matchmaking still has a long way to go although I'm currently sitting on 50.34% win rate from 872 games so maybe it works perfectly! It just feels like you're either stomping or being stomped. Finding a really even match is a rare pleasure.
It's also sometimes hard to keep in mind the game is still in beta, heading into its third international with a $2million+ prize pool :S
There was a massive dota update this week which generally filters over to dota2 whenever valve wants to stop breaking things and add something so should be copping some big changes
full changelog
should really mix things up if they make it over in time before ti's version is locked down.
Posted 12:14pm 31/5/13
Trog, 200 games is f*** all compared to my DOTA2+HoN+DOTA1 that i have. While you might hav played a range of other MP games, I think the MOBA community is rather unique as far as multiplayer experience goes and it seems i am used to it, you are not. Im dont have an issue with eliminating the abusive side of DOTA2 to appeal to a wider target audience but as i said, to me its just part of the game.
I somewhat agree Toll. I really, really hate 1 sided games as once the game is lost, you often have to endure another 15-30mins of pain. However, im sure we have all had games that appeared lost but went on to win. I had one last night. We were getting pretty pwned and things looked pretty f***ed around mid game, and end game prospects didnt look good. Somehow we turned the game around and ended up dominating. Not sure how or why.
EDIT: Some big changes there reload.
Posted 12:21pm 31/5/13
Now that developers are realising it's a problem and the community is toxic to new players, the culture is shifting and these people are getting weeded out, shut up, or changing their behavior.
I think most of us see this as a good thing, so as I said before...what's your point?
Posted 12:27pm 31/5/13
In short - Im used to the abuse in MOBA and hav no issue with it. If devs can get rid of it, then thats fine by me.
Posted 12:31pm 31/5/13
Posted 12:52pm 31/5/13
I have no words.... no nice ones, anyway.
Posted 05:16pm 31/5/13
Posted 05:20pm 31/5/13
Posted 09:27pm 31/5/13
Posted 09:34pm 31/5/13
Posted 09:56pm 31/5/13
I HAVE NO IDEA WHY I WAS BANNED LOL
Posted 10:24pm 31/5/13
Posted 10:32pm 31/5/13
No amount of calling people noobs can help you now, but continuing to do so makes it so much funnier.
Its why you were comm banned after all, lol.
Posted 10:42pm 31/5/13
Posted 08:40am 01/6/13
O it does has those times where some bizarre and magical stuff happens and suddenly your degenerate team is winning. However most of the time it doesn't, you team doesn't communicate at all, you have 3 carries that have died more then killed and the other team just has solid team work. It can just feel like a night of gaming was the massive waste of time it is. Instead of being somewhat rewarding.
So, for me at least, Dota2 takes up a lot of game time and the reward can sometimes be quite exhilarating, however I find the risk of not getting the exhilarating feeling too high since 1/2 of the game at least is out of my control, it is not worth the time of playing Dota2 overall.
Instead I play Chivalry and I'm pretty f***en good at it. /end plug
Posted 09:18am 01/6/13
Posted 10:07am 01/6/13
Posted 10:16am 01/6/13
I'VE PLAYED MORE GAMES OF DOTA THAN ANYONE HERE THEREFORE I SHOULD BE ABLE TO ACT LIKE A DOUCHE ON THE CHAT SYSTEM
is what I take away from this thread
Posted 11:32am 01/6/13
Posted 11:40am 01/6/13
Posted 11:45am 01/6/13
Posted 12:24pm 01/6/13
Posted 12:32pm 01/6/13
How can that possibly be interpreted in any other way then you abusing noobs on your team because they are making it harder for you to win?
Posted 12:36pm 01/6/13
I admit i should have worded my post better.
Posted 12:44pm 01/6/13
Posted 12:55pm 01/6/13
Posted 01:10pm 01/6/13
I've never heard of people using one of their 2 weekly reports on someone trash talking the other team. Maybe if they were really ridiculous about it.
Even if you unbelievably reserved your abuse for opposing team noobs, you're still apparently having a go at people for 'ruining the game' by being new? Bit of a c*** act.
Posted 01:54pm 01/6/13
I've had a few moments where I raged hard at my team mates, and been raged hard back. At some point I realized how ridiculous that was and stopped and was just a nice player from then on. My Self Respect level must have gone up a couple points at some point.
Posted 09:37am 03/6/13
I was speccing a mate's game the other day and there were two f***wits on the other team just being obnoxious - there was one guy on my mate's team who simply couldn't help himself and was baited every time into trying to respond, and then worse - he changed his game to try to attack the guys that were baiting him. So he stopped playing properly for his team and started playing for himself out of some lame vendetta attempt. Completely and utterly screwed the game for their team, of course.
Posted 09:55am 03/6/13
Still, the game brings out the rage in me either way :)
Posted 10:22am 03/6/13
Isnt cricket famous for the sledging during a game?
Posted 10:32am 03/6/13
Your tactics still confuse me though. You initially said that you call noobs noobs because you're annoyed some f***wit is causing an unbalanced game, ruining your opponents video game experience and making it easier for you to win (heh). Your response to this is to call the noobs on their team noobs, thereby making them play worse and making the video game experience even worse for your opponents and it even easier for you to win.
Posted 10:38am 03/6/13
Dota, unlike cricket, has a mute ability to make it absolutely trivial to ignore flamebait comments to take you off your game. I can generally ignore trolling because I'm not really emotionally invested in the game that much anyway. The only reason I won't mute someone is if (as I noted above) they're just being funny and friendly and it is contributing to my enjoyment of the game, or if they're on the verge of being a big enough a****** to justify a report.
Posted 10:57am 03/6/13
It's all about encouraging the bowler. If he beats the bat or hits the batsmen on the pads or body then you've got to say something. If you're square of the wicket and see that the batsmen is getting stuck in the crease (not making a solid movement forward or back) you have to let the bowler know that an LBW is on the cards. This is going to plant a seed of doubt in the batsmen mind and he may start overcompensating with his feet movement or premeditating what the bowler is going to deliver which usually results in a wicket.
I'll reiterate and say that if someone comes out who is obviously new to the game the talk will die down a bit. If you don't know how to bat you'll never last long, and it just becomes a matter of bowling an aggressive line and dismissing the batsmen. Hell, I've often seen opposing teams encourage the batsmen if he is obviously a complete newbie.
Posted 10:57am 03/6/13
I highly suggest trying it.(except if you are one of them)
Posted 11:35am 03/6/13
Incorrect. It was 2 differences sentences bro. I admit i should have worded that post better but there is no point changing it now. I dont expect to change your viewpoint though so whatever.
Correct. Most of the time the game is won by the better team but i do think throwing enemy players off their game with trash talk can make a difference. Thinking about my most recent games, i dont actually pick on the noobs but rather a noob plays. I think trash talking a good player who made a mistake has more of an impact than a noob player who plays s*** all game who is probably already copping abuse from his team mates.
BTW Ive never played cricket so i was interested to know about the sledging aspect. I know it happened a bit in soccer when i played in high school.
I thought the mute in DOTA was only for voice comm? Is it for text comm as well?
What do you play then dodgy? And by retards do you mean bad players or just abusive players?
Posted 12:49pm 03/6/13
i used to be one of the abusers, but i realised that it was not worth it. i have found a more enjoyable game if everyone is trying to achieve the same goal. i try to openly discuss where / how things can be done better in the next fight and trying that. at the end of the day, these sort of games are a two way street and it's up to everyone to roll their sleeves up and change their attitude.
it's always 1 out of the 10 players in the game that can ruin it for everyone.
if all else fails, my keyboard is pretty easy to put back together after i'd thrown it at a wall, so it's all good! :)
Posted 12:53pm 03/6/13
"F*** YOU KARTHUS USE YOUR ULTI!"
"We need to start using more teamwork guys!"
"Save your ulti for when we really need it karth!"
So if I do get reported, the tribunal can see the chat logs and hopefully vindicate me.
Posted 02:58pm 03/6/13
Also when someone would say something, he'd agree, then start repeating what someone said. And was a back seat player, telling everyone how to play their chars! But all he did was farm his heart and didn't even get a pipe. Until later in the game he got a pipe by selling his heart. IT WAS BAFFLING!
Never playing with that kid again.
Posted 03:53pm 03/6/13
Posted 04:15pm 03/6/13
Lol carlson. Ive noticed that in my recent games. Non farm heavy heroes spending time in lane or jungle farming instead of letting the carry do so and pushing with the team. Rageworthy as it really does unnecessarily increase the length of a match and make you more likely to lose if your end game heroes are lacking.
Posted 10:26am 04/6/13
Lol yeah. I've started playing with some really chill guys from High/Very High and they don't care if we win or lose (neither do I really**) as long as the game is fun and not dragged out unnecessarily. So I have come to hate the game being dragged out so someone can get that "one last item" when they don't really need it.
**In fact the only time I care if I don't win is when the other team are d*******s who trash talk for no reason.
I had a super sweet game last night as QoP. My first game as her and we gutter stomped. The other team didn't get a kill till our team was f*****g around in their base waiting for the ancient to die.
Posted 09:37am 06/6/13
How the f*** you go from
towith a straight face I'll never know.
Unfortunately for you, no matter how much you say retarded s*** like thisand thiseveryone who reads this thread knows that you're a c*** who rages at noobs on your own team and gets banned for it.
Also f*****g lol at this
to thisNO, YOU DIDN'T SAY THAT AT ALL LOLOLOL
gg Dav0. /thread
Posted 09:07am 06/6/13
Posted 09:12am 06/6/13
Posted 09:27am 06/6/13
Posted 08:01pm 06/6/13
Yes, I sure am ESL!
...oh wait, what I meant was no, I'm not ESL. Sorry, I "should have worded my post better".
At least we can take one thing away from this thread, if Dav0 says "I never said <blank>" we can be absolutely sure that he definitely said <blank>.