Gaming communities don't have a good fix for toxic player behavior

[Craig234]

I've been playing Overwatch. It has a mix of players from nice to jerky.

They added an 'endorsement' system to try to help reduce the toxic behavior, and it did, but there's still plenty.

I've usually been getting multiple 'endorsements' each match, but sometimes there are players who get criticized for various things. They're often the same people who do a lot of insulting and such.

And telling them to do something different, telling them their communications are blocked, often seems to result in their reporting me ironically.

And the system seems automated. Get reported, it's assumed valid.

I recently had a high level of positive 'endorsements' I don't see a lot; it mysteriously went down a rank, and today back up. On the other hand, yesterday I got a message that there had been bad reports also.

Today, there was a match where two of five other random people on a team did not listen to the voice chat in a 'competitive match' and I told them that prevented a coordinated plan. The team did not play an important role, and I mentioned we could use that. Someone said 'telling the team they suck doesn't help'; I said, 'did I use the word 'suck'? No. I'm telling them what needs to be done to win.' The person was hostile enough I said I was blocking his chat, he said 'good'.

Then after the game, it said my account is suspended for a week, obviously because that guy had done a report.

This is the problem with such automated systems. They encourage basically not participating in the communication. Blizzard's stated policy is they will not reverse such bans.

So whether they're for people acting badly, or people criticizing their acting badly and the people acting badly reporting them, it's the same to the system.

This comes up in a lot of online situations. It's different than, say, these forums where if there's a conflict and reporting, a person reviews the behavior and responds based on the facts.

An alternative is another Blizzard game, Hearthstone, where the players have almost no interaction - just a small number of 'emotes' they can press. "Wow". "Oops". Etc.

That's quite a different experience. I've had hundreds of 'friend' requests in Overwatch (if not thousands by now), but never one I know of in Hearthstone.

Moderating costs money for a game (or for these forums, volunteer or paid time). A game with millions of customers has a hard time with a budget for moderating the behavior, so it's automated.

But that results in problems for people however they deal with it - whether getting banned, or ignoring bad behavior, or ending participation in the communication.

No easy answer, but I suspect there is improvement available, such as weighting the negative reporting based on the positive reporting. Or maybe 'player volunteer' moderators given reports at random?

Even the latter probably isn't practical, since so much is based on voice chat, and they'd have to save all the voice chat for each player in each match and take a long time for someone to listen to it.

Any ideas? It raises the temptation not to continue participating in the purchased game.

 

[Zenoth]

Anonymity has a lot to do with that. In most cases those same online-immature individuals wouldn't have said anything like that (or wouldn't have generally dysfunctionally-behaved) in person, in the same room; and especially not in public. They're probably not saying things like that when they play with their friends at home or at their friends' places either. At work or at school they're probably just "normal", too (again, there's always going to be exceptions but I'm generalizing). But for some reason (psychologists would have a lot of food for thought on that one) playing video games anonymously, and usually alone (or whenever your parent, sibling or loved one isn't home to hear it) the person's inner aggressiveness / immaturity / idiocy surfaces and the general IQ drops to six feet under. It goes way beyond just "being alone", it has to be that and then combined with also "being online" and then you have to take in the factor of "human interaction".

It's the complete opposite (physically) to the crowd (IQ drop) mentality. However, I've seen some articles before comparing this (toxic behavior online, and in online gaming communities of course) exactly to just that (to the crowd mentality). I remember one of them referring to being online giving the brain the impression of being in a crowd, even if you're physically alone in your living room; that just because you 'know' you're on the web, in a network and that you're playing a game online (with other people, even if you don't physically see them; although can hear and can talk to them) that the 'pattern' of toxic behavior (basically "how the brain / person's persona gets there") is pretty much the same as most people's behavior observed during mass commotion / unrest in big crowd movements and panics under various situations and contexts (be it crowds sacking commerce and stores at night after a local sports team won or lost an important match, or a crowd breaking infrastructure and general public stuff after or during a protest, etc).

The reason why I bring this stuff up is because toxic behavior in online gaming will never go away as long as the psychology will remain indifferent to the medium. It cannot realistically and feasibly be policed by a single gaming company in the world. Not now, and never, ever. If you have a community that has about as many human beings as a whole country's population there's no way to control said individuals on a case by case basis, much less right there Live as it happens. The only things that can be done are whenever said companies create systems that - to some extent only - can react only after the toxicity happened ("reports"). In other words, it is guaranteed to happen, and the only thing you (as a player) can do is use the system in place whenever it's there and interactive for you to use and report players. There's absolutely no 'miracle solutions' to toxic behaviors online. There's too many factors way past the mere sheer numbers alone to fight against (purely mathematically and internal human resources-speaking, for the companies involved, how can you possibly monitor 50K, 100K+ or even more players all at once all around the world at the same time? You can't). Not even automated systems that react to reports based on some A.I. looking at it made by the devs can do it; or can do it well enough on a case by case scenario. Usually those automated systems alienate entire groups and just act way too broadly, or are just plain and simple exaggerated in imposing hostile punishments on innocents that were caught between the fires of the A.I. only doing what it was programmed to do, and the devs not thinking straight when they made it.

It's possible to mitigate a little bit, to "encourage" good behaviors. But the very fact that there's systems in place to encourage people to behave well to start with is a direct response to the inevitability of toxicity. We're at a point where it's actually easier to encourage people to behave well than it is to actively fight toxicity after the fact. And as the years (and then decades) will pass, we'll have an increased world population, more people in general will play video games and gaming communities will only grow bigger especially for the 'big' games. The only "solutions" I would think of myself would involve regional / national laws (where applicable, or created for this specifically), actual sanctions by authorities and up to actual jail time. I really wouldn't bother with those "good behavior encouragement" systems, those in my book are just a waste of time and human resources (although, on the other hand I suppose it did give some employees at Blizzard something to do for a couple of months while they were creating said system, if anything). But that's just me though (and even then it wouldn't work for every cases; you'd still end up having someone not caring spitting his or her immaturity anonymously in a chat window in some game).

However, if specifically for Overwatch their endorsement system really somewhat helped alleviate the problem a bit then maybe it's a sign that there's some ways to fight it. But don't dream too much about a day when toxicity will entirely stop for online gaming.

 

[Zeze]

I think they came a long way.

Dota 2 is awful for this since the game punishes you for abandoning a match, you are stuck with a toxic player (and vice versa) for the next 30 to 40 mins. And he has the power to ruin it for other 9 players (5v5)

Overwatch is nowhere near toxic and ugly as Dota 2, simply by design. Matches are shorter, there are less resource sharing roles, you can backfill right away, there are no irreversible skill tree selection or itemization with gold, etc.

If you are an OG gamer from 2000s, youd know Overeatch is quite tame vs Dota/league clones.

 

[EXCellR8]

Do games like these still allow active players to vote to kick & ban others? I actually thought that system worked pretty well for the games I played in the past. I figure most matchmaking systems can replace players pretty quickly in popular titles so there's less toxicity in matches.

 

[Regs]

Just like a real world job you mean? If the dick-head is making a lot of money and is a friend of the boss - all is forgiven.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Of course they don't. People are aholes for no reason on the internet. That isn't going to change.

My wife does pretty innate stuff online (crafting type forums etc), and those people can be just as vile for no reason, there's not even any competition. It is just people with differing opinions.

Which leads me to what I think is why the internet is the vile place it is now: Self importance. People are so self involved in their own little bubble, and it is a world wide forum of 1000's of different opinions on any given topic and everyone has to be right. Which leads to conflict (it really is no different than the ongoing wars based on religious differences). Most humans by nature like conflict and have a very difficult time seeing another persons perspective.

In the old days, (Quake time period) there were some jerks but for the most part people were nice, friendly and helpful. If you sucked, they would SHOW you how to get better, right in the middle of the game. The difference? Back then most of the people on the internet were the 'young nerds/geeks and older nerds/geeks'. There was no 'get gud' rhetoric. There was no 'newb' with a mean tone. Once the internet became mainstream you got the bulk of the 'jocks/etc' of hateful people who were jerks in real life as well. I'm not saying it is all due to that, but that is when things started to turn. All of this ties into what I stated above. The type of people who embraced the internet first were not the conflict driven people that the mainstream is. Thus the change.

I have always maintained, how you act online is how you act in real life. In most all cases anyone I've interacted with online and then met in real life who was a jerk online, is a jerk in real life and vice/versa. They may not show it constantly, but it is there. Anonymity is definitely a big part of it, but that was ALWAYS there. It isn't something that just became the norm in the last 10 years. Additionally, people aren't even concerned about being anonymous anymore. They throw it right out there with a video and their name stamped everywhere.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Of course they don't. People are aholes for no reason on the internet. That isn't going to change.

My wife does pretty innate stuff online (crafting type forums etc), and those people can be just as vile for no reason, there's not even any competition. It is just people with differing opinions.

Which leads me to what I think is why the internet is the vile place it is now: Self importance. People are so self involved in their own little bubble, and it is a world wide forum of 1000's of different opinions on any given topic and everyone has to be right. Which leads to conflict (it really is no different than the ongoing wars based on religious differences). Most humans by nature like conflict and have a very difficult time seeing another persons perspective.

In the old days, (Quake time period) there were some jerks but for the most part people were nice, friendly and helpful. If you sucked, they would SHOW you how to get better, right in the middle of the game. The difference? Back then most of the people on the internet were the 'young nerds/geeks and older nerds/geeks'. There was no 'get gud' rhetoric. There was no 'newb' with a mean tone. Once the internet became mainstream you got the bulk of the 'jocks/etc' of hateful people who were jerks in real life as well. I'm not saying it is all due to that, but that is when things started to turn. All of this ties into what I stated above. The type of people who embraced the internet first were not the conflict driven people that the mainstream is. Thus the change.

I have always maintained, how you act online is how you act in real life. In most all cases anyone I've interacted with online and then met in real life who was a jerk online, is a jerk in real life and vice/versa. They may not show it constantly, but it is there. Anonymity is definitely a big part of it, but that was ALWAYS there. It isn't something that just became the norm in the last 10 years. Additionally, people aren't even concerned about being anonymous anymore. They throw it right out there with a video and their name stamped everywhere.

So true
I remember old Diablo Battle Net how 99% of folks were friendly, and then around 1% were annoying PKers. I remember Duke3D on Kali where people were more or less just super psyched about playing their favorite game online...

 

[Midwayman]

I kinda liked the idea of LoL's player judging. (Mind you I quite playing much before this became a thing.) Infractions were judged by other players and you were rewarded for judging events.

In the end players have to be self moderating to a large extent. That may be a formal system like above, or just reports like overwatch. Eventually the numbers just catch up to the problem players even if you get hit with false positives from trolls once in awhile. I like the idea of matching them all in troll fests so they can be toxic to one another rather than starting new accounts.

FWIW toxicity is one reason I stay away from F2P games. No investment in an account = a far more toxic community in my experience.

 

[DigDog]

This is a discussion that could ho on forever, but i mostly think aggressive behaviour should be encouraged instead of stifled. How about you give me a "enemies list" to go together with my friends list; dont censor my chats, allow players to issue challenges, have player bet an ante on their match, and spraypaint all over the forums "XYY rekked YXX" with the loser's name.

These are competition games; one wins, the other loses. The same happens IRL in sports, and i think people would sooner login to play to fight someone they hate rather than play with someone in their friends list.

On the practical side, griefing is something that needs to be taken into consideration just as you do for hackers, at a game-design level. If PK is a problem, for example, start the match with the UI clearly displaying the PK score of each player and give teammates the option to votekick. Let players create lobbies with a max PK score.

Animosity in a game community is a precious resource if a developer knows how to harvest it.

 

[DrunkenSano]

The Internet. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The Internet. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Oh you...but you're spot on. It's just what comes with the internet and nobody knowing them personally. A lot of people get on a power trip when online gaming and act elitist about nearly everything. Annoying to say the least but the biggest problem is that there are people who would defend them because "They are #10 in the world" or "They won tournament x so they earned the right to be a d-bag". Toxic people are held on a pedestal by a toxic community behind them. You only have to look at how some of the fighting game community is to see what I mean. Openly mocking new players and calling them scrub etc is commonplace. They wonder why there's not more people joining in but then they treat people like dirt.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

What happened to moderated private servers?

During the "old days" you'd have clans setting up their own private servers with their own rules and guidelines and moderators.

You find a handful of good servers and just come back to those day after day.

People talk about game "communities" nowadays, but really when games moved to the p2p matchmaking system the term became so broad it lost all it's meaning.

I think a lot of the "social media esq" tools, paired with private servers with private moderation, would be enough for everyone to carve out their own niche.

Back when I played Day of Defeat, I would drop in on some really well moderated servers that would perma ban the random idiot that would drop in and start plasting racial slurs. Then sometimes I'd jump on to a server run by white supremacists and quietly rack up a kill count for a sort of catharsis (on the internet, no one knows you're not an ubermench).

 

[tamz_msc]

What happened to moderated private servers?

During the "old days" you'd have clans setting up their own private servers with their own rules and guidelines and moderators.

You find a handful of good servers and just come back to those day after day.

People talk about game "communities" nowadays, but really when games moved to the p2p matchmaking system the term became so broad it lost all it's meaning.

I think a lot of the "social media esq" tools, paired with private servers with private moderation, would be enough for everyone to carve out their own niche.

Back when I played Day of Defeat, I would drop in on some really well moderated servers that would perma ban the random idiot that would drop in and start plasting racial slurs. Then sometimes I'd jump on to a server run by white supremacists and quietly rack up a kill count for a sort of catharsis (on the internet, no one knows you're not an ubermench).

They're still present, just not in 'AAA' titles like Overwatch or Battlefield. Like Stephen Hawking said in his preface to A Brief History of Time - just like every equation included in the book would potentially halve the number of readers who would buy it, things like a server browser, IPs, ping times and console commands are apparently too much for the casual audience. That coupled with the shenanigans of EA being greedy for dedicated servers have made these features non-existent in current AAA games. At least they exist on Source-engine games, which are thankfully the only multiplayer games I play.

 

[killster1]

yea i dont care to read the super long replies and even the Op went on and on.. Ya sounds like you where angry and mad.. you got reported oh well.. Try to think "its a game" relax.. and ya this is exactly like the real world. At work if 20 diff people make up stories and say you did something wrong you will be getting in trouble. Even if every story is false just because jealous or for fun. not sure peoples motives but i know in real life i do say things to people and have no problem telling people to their face i dont approve of their antics.

 

[Craig234]

It's funny how people can think they write a 'short' post but have nothing to say - yet I didn't even finish the first line of the post above.

 

[cmdrdredd]

It's funny how people can think they write a 'short' post but have nothing to say - yet I didn't even finish the first line of the post above.

Haha

Well I mean if you aren’t going to read the post and think you know what was said or meant why respond at all?

 

[Aikouka]

Today, there was a match where two of five other random people on a team did not listen to the voice chat in a 'competitive match' and I told them that prevented a coordinated plan. The team did not play an important role, and I mentioned we could use that. Someone said 'telling the team they suck doesn't help'; I said, 'did I use the word 'suck'? No. I'm telling them what needs to be done to win.' The person was hostile enough I said I was blocking his chat, he said 'good'.

Eh, while you didn't do anything bad in that altercation that you described, you didn't exactly make the best choices in regard to your interactions. First, I'm not exactly sure what you said to the two people, so I can't really comment on that. Although, I'm also not sure exactly what the issue was. Were they in voice chat, but ignored strategy, or were they just not in voice chat?

Second, do not feed trolls or antagonistic people. If you don't like the way someone is acting and want to block them, DO NOT TELL THEM. You aren't helping the situation, and I'd argue that it's also antagonistic and somewhat petty as you're trying to get in the last jab as they'll be unable to respond.

Really, even though it's almost sickeningly sweet, I find it far better to try and be overly kind. One important thing is that people generally don't like their flaws being pointed out... and that's especially when it's being done by some random person that they don't know, they didn't ask the other player for the critique, and they don't know if the other player is even providing good feedback. That's why it normally works better to phrase things in a positive manner.

 

[Midwayman]

One important thing is that people generally don't like their flaws being pointed out... and that's especially when it's being done by some random person that they don't know, they didn't ask the other player for the critique, and they don't know if the other player is even providing good feedback. That's why it normally works better to phrase things in a positive manner.

Its usually the guy who is dead a lot who has time to give everyone advice, that doesn't help.

 

[Craig234]

Funny how you can count on some people always looking to blame the poster in discussions like this, unable to actually listen to the topic and not make assumptions and accusations.

They don't really deserve a response. Why, I bet they're trolls and griefers - see how that works? The topic is the problem for games to deal with toxic players.

 

[Rebel_L]

I find automated punishment systems are always too easy exploit to be effective in what they were designed for. If you want a good working system I think you have give players the power to affect themselves rather than to affect others. By that I mean something like giving players say an unlimited space ignore list and players you place on it no longer get the opportunity to interact with you. This would end up creating smaller communities inside a game of people who agree on which behaviors are and are not appropriate. If someone manages to make it onto everyones ignore list they end up with a single player game. The opposite is also true, if you hate everyone and ignore everyone, you also are playing alone.

The downside to something like that is of course it doesnt work well in conjunction with something like trying to have an esport game, you cant really develop a proper ranking system if people can opt out of playing with specific others. It would also throw another monkey wrench into matchmaking systems which could be problematic. I would be really curious to see in a game with something like ladder rankings if people would opt out of the ranking system if it means they get more control over who they choose to not play with.

 

[Feneant2]

As I get older my tolerance for this diminishes so mostly every game I play now I mute the chat and sound. I tell myself I'm playing a single player game online with bots (that happen to have human behavior). Personally, I miss the old days of typing chat, it seemed much better- not to mention made it easier to report by screenshot or text command. Back then a game would end and you'd see a stream of 'good game' , 'see you later', 'I'll get you next time' where instead now you can hear some teenager telling you off.

 

[Aikouka]

Funny how you can count on some people always looking to blame the poster in discussions like this, unable to actually listen to the topic and not make assumptions and accusations.

They don't really deserve a response. Why, I bet they're trolls and griefers - see how that works? The topic is the problem for games to deal with toxic players.

Except the whole first half of your post is bringing up a situation in which you ended up suspended, but I'd argue that it's implied that you thought you did nothing wrong. While you didn't violate the rules, you didn't exactly help the situation any. You've been on this forum for 12 years, which should have instilled the idea of "don't feed/antagonize the trolls", and that concept also applies to online interactions.

It's the same thing when I deal with perverted miscreants in Twitch chat. I will just time them out or ban them, and say nothing about it. Trying to post rebuttals or comebacks is rarely useful and mostly just makes the chat focus on something that isn't even related to the game anyway. It's not much different for Overwatch where arguing with another player isn't helpful toward the game/match in question.

All in all, if you want to discuss toxicity and bring up an example, don't expect people to just naturally take your side without trying to examine how one side can be toxic and the other side does things that can make it worse. You want to know a good example of toxicity? A few seasons ago, a Symmetra got mad on Nepal because someone hit the basketball before they could hit it, so the Symmetra player just jumped off the map the entire match. No one said anything to the person nor did the Symmetra ask that no one touch the ball; they just flipped out right after someone knocked the basketball away.

 

[Craig234]

Except the whole first half of your post is bringing up a situation in which you ended up suspended, but I'd argue that it's implied that you thought you did nothing wrong. While you didn't violate the rules, you didn't exactly help the situation any. You've been on this forum for 12 years, which should have instilled the idea of "don't feed/antagonize the trolls", and that concept also applies to online interactions.

It's the same thing when I deal with perverted miscreants in Twitch chat. I will just time them out or ban them, and say nothing about it. Trying to post rebuttals or comebacks is rarely useful and mostly just makes the chat focus on something that isn't even related to the game anyway. It's not much different for Overwatch where arguing with another player isn't helpful toward the game/match in question.

All in all, if you want to discuss toxicity and bring up an example, don't expect people to just naturally take your side without trying to examine how one side can be toxic and the other side does things that can make it worse. You want to know a good example of toxicity? A few seasons ago, a Symmetra got mad on Nepal because someone hit the basketball before they could hit it, so the Symmetra player just jumped off the map the entire match. No one said anything to the person nor did the Symmetra ask that no one touch the ball; they just flipped out right after someone knocked the basketball away.

I discussed the issue of the system, and you stuck your nose in making assertions that were negative where you are 100% ignorant.

Told you were wrong, you doubled down and posted a bunch of straw men trying to defend yourself. Learn when to quit.

In addition to the dishonesty of such assertion, in addition to the lack of manners, your behavior is also an attempt to derail the thread from the topic.

The incident in question is for illustrating how the system works, not for you to make things up about what happened or might have happened.

Your posting an example of toxic behavior without any connection to the thread topic is irrelevant. Yes, someone did that you say. So what? Did anyone ask for an example?

 

[Red Storm]

It's not a gaming problem, it's an internet (aka anonymous users) problem. The only legit fix I can think of is comment/user vetting done by moderators, and that doesn't really work with games.

When you setup a giant room that everyone in the world can join anonymously, you're going to get assholes.

 

[Rifter]

F2P games are by far the worst. I dont really know what the solution is but ive stopped playing more than a few games due to the MP becoming to toxic and the devs failing to do anything effective about it.