Jump to content

Toxicity


ChrisSchmidt

Recommended Posts

  • Dev Post

Hi friends,

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I want to chat a bit about toxicity and what actions we’re taking to reduce friction points in the game that can lead to toxic behavior.

 

In general, our philosophy in regards to toxicity and harassment is there is no room for it in our service. But it’s not quite as simple as ‘find the toxic people and remove them’, because there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Often times folks are just having a bad day, and some friction point in the game rules or mechanics can exacerbate this and lead to a negative or harmful social experience.

 

So we have to take a bit of a holistic approach to toxicity, and remain committed to improving the game and the service over time across several avenues.

 

Reporting

 

As a member of the Fair Play Alliance, EA is committed to providing a safe space to play where all are welcome. As part of this, toxicity and harassment actions that the Customer Service team apply to folks violating the Terms of Service are being escalated to more severe actioning.

 

Backfill and Decline/Deserter Improvements

 

We’re always trying to improve our matchmaker, especially the backfill mechanism in Solo Ranked PvP matches. Players have manipulated the system in order to gain an advantage or to try and mis-match teams missing certain roles, typically by declining matches as a particular role.

 

In Game Update 6.1.4 we’ve improved the backfill system so that if a tank or healer declines a match, it will backfill with the same role if one is available. In addition, we are increasing penalties on players declining multiple matches for Ranked PvP.

 

Vote Kick

 

Vote kick was a feature implemented years ago with the best intentions, giving players the power to remove a toxic member of their group. However, we’ve seen behavior change over time towards vote kick being abused not to remove harmful players, but harass or troll legitimate ones.

 

In Game Update 6.1.4 we are removing vote kick from Ranked PvP, which is where we see the greatest abuse of this feature. If we see continued abuse we will remove it from other game modes. I would like to add that some of the original intent for Vote Kick (AFK players, etc) has been mitigated over the years by increased detection methods and data logging. However, we will continue to closely monitor for the behavior Vote Kick was intended to curb, and continue to invest in more advanced detection methods.

 

Gear Requirements in Ranked PvP

 

In an effort to welcome more new players into Ranked PvP, we implemented our Bolster system which would scale player’s power to the equivalent of iLevel 306. As a barrier to entry we also require a Valor Rank 25 in order to queue for Ranked PvP. We would like to find a balance between keeping the queues populated with players and giving a high quality game experience in that game mode. We believe this barrier to entry has been too low.

 

In Game Update 6.1.4 we are adding a gear requirement of iLevel 306, in addition to Valor Rank 25, in order to be able to queue for Solo Ranked PvP.

 

Legacy Ignore

 

Currently the game supports character-based ignore lists, but not Legacy-wide ignore, meaning harassers could just create another character and persist in ruining the experience for another player.

 

In Game Update 6.1.4 we are updating the Ignore list to ignore an entire Legacy. If you add a player to this list, it will apply to every character they create in their Legacy. It will behave very similarly to the current Ignore list, with the addition of not allowing an Ignored Legacy into your Personal Stronghold.

 

Future

 

As we look forward, we have lots more opportunities we’re pursuing, including improving our in-game reporting tools and automated detection methods. We’ll share more about what additional changes are coming as we get closer to these showing up in-game.

 

 

All of the game-side improvements coming in 6.1.4 will be available to check out in the upcoming PTS. We’re eager to hear your feedback and look forward to you all trying them out!

 

-Chris

:csw_jabbapet:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 128
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

These changes are sounding very promising, especially the legacy ignore feature.

Just a quick question, if a player is reporting another, will it be the same, ie just spam, or will the option be to report different type of behaviour. And not just if you are beside them, but in the general too.

Also, can you tell us, if you report someone does it copy the chat, so it can be seen what they have done.

I know, we'll never see it, or even know what happens, but it would be nice to know that you, or a mod can see what actually happens.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like what you have to say here and I hope it is implemented as advertised.

 

One caveat though, a while back I received a 7 day suspension and the reason was absolutely bonkers and when I tried to appeal it, I got zero response from the EA email where I was told I could appeal.

 

Besides the fact that EA basically stole my game time I paid for, the fact is that it was just one of these trolls who reported me and there was zero recourse. The same thing used to happen when a certain guild by a certain female character of ill repute would squelch people. If real people (that actually understand English and the SWTOR game play) are not at the end of the actions I'm afraid this kind of tomfoolery will continue unabated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Gear Requirements in Ranked PvP

In Game Update 6.1.4 we are adding a gear requirement of iLevel 306, in addition to Valor Rank 25, in order to be able to queue for Solo Ranked PvP.

 

While this definitely helps, bolster won't make up for missing set bonus nor will it make up for missing tactical. Bolster would however deal with poor item level to an extent, would it be possible to upgrade the requirements or make it easier to obtain much needed non-bolstered items?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the legacy ignore, but considering your plan to add new augments to the game with the same update adding again required mats from both raids and ranked pvp, I think you're basically giving people more reasons to get upset because mat farming in ranked will become a thing again....just like the previous time. So it feels like your paving the way for PvE'rs to get into ranked for mat farming and pushing PvP'ers out of the game in one fell swoop. Not sure if that'll work out well.

 

Mind you, you're right about what you said, but the addition of mats for augments that can only be had in ranked PvP will make it very frustrating and not a fun experience for PvP'ers. It feels like these are good ideas that will be undone by bringing back the mats farm.

Edited by Tsillah
Link to comment
Share on other sites

These all seem like positive changes to help players deal with toxicity and trolls.

 

Could you elaborate on what is being done with regards to handling reports on players? Is there more CSR reviews of reports to ensure false flagging is dealt with? Is there investigation into toxic behaviour across multiple connected accounts ( ie correlation of multiple toxic players all in the same guild )

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Legacy Ignore

 

Currently the game supports character-based ignore lists, but not Legacy-wide ignore, meaning harassers could just create another character and persist in ruining the experience for another player.

 

In Game Update 6.1.4 we are updating the Ignore list to ignore an entire Legacy. If you add a player to this list, it will apply to every character they create in their Legacy. It will behave very similarly to the current Ignore list, with the addition of not allowing an Ignored Legacy into your Personal Stronghold.

A Legacy wide ignore sounds good, but I have a question about its implementation. Will Legacy wide ignore populate a player's Ignore list with all of the Ignored Legacy's character names? If so, there are two issues with this. One, the space allowed on the Ignored list -- it could fill up very quickly. Two, if an Ignored Legacy's character names appear on the Ignored list, BW is opening the door to some epic level player to player harassment by providing the names of every targeted-by-harassers player's character names.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Love the legacy ignore change. Thank you for that!

 

The client-side spy component you have added needs to be streamlined though. ATM it is causing too much instability on too many systems. Maybe use something different than the old MD5 cryptographic hash algorithm? It's fine to check all the loaded .DLL's in our systems to check for automation or illegal programs, but its not okay to mess with our system's performance because of your bad programming in trying to implement something that only a very small percentage of your userbase MIGHT be using.

Please snoop around our processes all you want, but please do it responsibly!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wanna improve PvP ? Bring back expertise. Make the pve crowd work to get into ranked . I don't understand why expertise was removed in the 1st place . Make the rrequirements to be maxed item rating, full expertise, and give us the option to que for unranked arenas so people can get the feel for it cuz 8s don't do much to get you ready
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Legacy Ignore is great, thx for that.

 

One question: Does it still effect Groupfinder in the future?

 

It would be a pleasure to know that after adding a legacy to the ignore list you will never see this player on any other character in the Groupfinder again.

Edited by Oeconomicus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the legacy ignore, but considering your plan to add new augments to the game with the same update adding again required mats from both raids and ranked pvp, I think you're basically giving people more reasons to get upset because mat farming in ranked will become a thing again....just like the previous time. So it feels like your paving the way for PvE'rs to get into ranked for mat farming and pushing PvP'ers out of the game in one fell swoop. Not sure if that'll work out well.

 

Mind you, you're right about what you said, but the addition of mats for augments that can only be had in ranked PvP will make it very frustrating and not a fun experience for PvP'ers. It feels like these are good ideas that will be undone by bringing back the mats farm.

 

This.

 

I welcome reasonable changes to try and reduce toxic behavior- but that should include a good hard look in the mirror by the development team.

 

If you design the game to pit players against one another and / or like with the changes that require wins for credit in everything from the weekly to conquest to gear rewards, you are as much a part of the problem.

 

I can't see anything but more toxicity with the ludicrous proposed increases to conquest points for ranked PVP, and the announced new augments which will require materials from ranked (even for those doing NiM PVE).

Edited by DawnAskham
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This.

 

I welcome reasonable changes to try and reduce toxic behavior- but that should include a good hard look in the mirror by the development team.

 

If you design the game to pit players against one another and / or like with the changes that require wins for credit in everything from the weekly to conquest to gear rewards, you are as much a part of the problem.

 

I can't see anything but more toxicity with the ludicrous proposed increases to conquest points for ranked PVP, and the announced new augments which will require materials from ranked (even for those doing NiM PVE).

 

I did just realise that mats farm will not be the same, since now you have to actually win to get your dailies/weeklies...so it'll be a money maker for the pvp'ers and a big f... you to raiders this time around....but it's to help the raiders of course...lol.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Legacy Ignore is great, thx for that.

 

One question: Does it still effect Groupfinder in the future?

 

It would be a pleasure to know that after adding a legacy to the ignore list you will never see this player on any other character in the Groupfinder again.

 

My words exactly. Looking forward to be able to use group finder again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi friends,

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I want to chat a bit about toxicity and what actions we’re taking to reduce friction points in the game that can lead to toxic behavior.

 

In general, our philosophy in regards to toxicity and harassment is there is no room for it in our service. But it’s not quite as simple as ‘find the toxic people and remove them’, because there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Often times folks are just having a bad day, and some friction point in the game rules or mechanics can exacerbate this and lead to a negative or harmful social experience.

 

So we have to take a bit of a holistic approach to toxicity, and remain committed to improving the game and the service over time across several avenues.

 

Reporting

 

As a member of the Fair Play Alliance, EA is committed to providing a safe space to play where all are welcome. As part of this, toxicity and harassment actions that the Customer Service team apply to folks violating the Terms of Service are being escalated to more severe actioning.

 

Backfill and Decline/Deserter Improvements

 

We’re always trying to improve our matchmaker, especially the backfill mechanism in Solo Ranked PvP matches. Players have manipulated the system in order to gain an advantage or to try and mis-match teams missing certain roles, typically by declining matches as a particular role.

 

In Game Update 6.1.4 we’ve improved the backfill system so that if a tank or healer declines a match, it will backfill with the same role if one is available. In addition, we are increasing penalties on players declining multiple matches for Ranked PvP.

 

Vote Kick

 

Vote kick was a feature implemented years ago with the best intentions, giving players the power to remove a toxic member of their group. However, we’ve seen behavior change over time towards vote kick being abused not to remove harmful players, but harass or troll legitimate ones.

 

In Game Update 6.1.4 we are removing vote kick from Ranked PvP, which is where we see the greatest abuse of this feature. If we see continued abuse we will remove it from other game modes. I would like to add that some of the original intent for Vote Kick (AFK players, etc) has been mitigated over the years by increased detection methods and data logging. However, we will continue to closely monitor for the behavior Vote Kick was intended to curb, and continue to invest in more advanced detection methods.

 

Gear Requirements in Ranked PvP

 

In an effort to welcome more new players into Ranked PvP, we implemented our Bolster system which would scale player’s power to the equivalent of iLevel 306. As a barrier to entry we also require a Valor Rank 25 in order to queue for Ranked PvP. We would like to find a balance between keeping the queues populated with players and giving a high quality game experience in that game mode. We believe this barrier to entry has been too low.

 

In Game Update 6.1.4 we are adding a gear requirement of iLevel 306, in addition to Valor Rank 25, in order to be able to queue for Solo Ranked PvP.

 

Legacy Ignore

 

Currently the game supports character-based ignore lists, but not Legacy-wide ignore, meaning harassers could just create another character and persist in ruining the experience for another player.

 

In Game Update 6.1.4 we are updating the Ignore list to ignore an entire Legacy. If you add a player to this list, it will apply to every character they create in their Legacy. It will behave very similarly to the current Ignore list, with the addition of not allowing an Ignored Legacy into your Personal Stronghold.

 

Future

 

As we look forward, we have lots more opportunities we’re pursuing, including improving our in-game reporting tools and automated detection methods. We’ll share more about what additional changes are coming as we get closer to these showing up in-game.

 

 

All of the game-side improvements coming in 6.1.4 will be available to check out in the upcoming PTS. We’re eager to hear your feedback and look forward to you all trying them out!

 

-Chris

:csw_jabbapet:

 

Good changes Chris. Look forward to testing them

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Legacy Ignore

 

Currently the game supports character-based ignore lists, but not Legacy-wide ignore, meaning harassers could just create another character and persist in ruining the experience for another player.

 

In Game Update 6.1.4 we are updating the Ignore list to ignore an entire Legacy. If you add a player to this list, it will apply to every character they create in their Legacy. It will behave very similarly to the current Ignore list, with the addition of not allowing an Ignored Legacy into your Personal Stronghold.

 

 

Just curious how this will affect the ranked que. Just what exactly does ignore cause? Does it mean you will not be qued with that player or against him? That could make the que quite interesting if people ignore most people.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A Legacy wide ignore sounds good, but I have a question about its implementation. Will Legacy wide ignore populate a player's Ignore list with all of the Ignored Legacy's character names? If so, there are two issues with this. One, the space allowed on the Ignored list -- it could fill up very quickly. Two, if an Ignored Legacy's character names appear on the Ignored list, BW is opening the door to some epic level player to player harassment by providing the names of every targeted-by-harassers player's character names.

 

I'd really like to see a comment field there too, exactly as it is for the Friends List.

It'd be helpful to be able to make a note as to WHY I ignored that person (or legacy).

 

Good points. Also, is this ignore Legacy by Legacy? Or are the ignore lists still by toon? (Ex. If I were to legacy-ignore someone on Character A, would I also have to legacy-ignore them on Character B?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Chris

 

Quick question : will ignoring someone who has their legacy name concealed, allow other players to track their whole legacy in pvp?

Aka, at the moment, people already abuse the report system to find out people’s legacy to avoid them in pvp queues or troll them in pvp.

Is this going to open up another method to do this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Most of these changes don't really concern me as I don't do ranked but I'm glad the forums seem to be pleased with them, especially the legacy ignore feature which is something that as a casual PVEr will be really useful for me to ignore people who are toxic on group finder:D Also do we have any hopes or estimates for a possible friend list based on legacy as well?

 

On the subject of new/improved Ignore List:

 

I'd really like to see a comment field there too, exactly as it is for the Friends List.

It'd be helpful to be able to make a note as to WHY I ignored that person (or legacy).

 

--Dianiss

 

This would be great, sometimes I forget whether or not it was an actual toxic player or just a goldseller.

Edited by FlameYOL
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did just realise that mats farm will not be the same, since now you have to actually win to get your dailies/weeklies...so it'll be a money maker for the pvp'ers and a big f... you to raiders this time around....but it's to help the raiders of course...lol.

 

They are definitely not making the same mistakes as last time, which is how it seemed at first when they announced that wins were required to get your pvp dailies and weeklies done.

 

What's happening is they are creating a system that will, beyond any doubt, lead to tons of win-trading.

 

Is that a bad thing?

 

Well, it depends on your perspective.

 

Maybe they hope that what starts off as win-trading will turn into real pvp as more people participate.

 

Or...

 

Maybe someone higher up told them, "You know guys, the only new content your players really consume is story, events, cartel market stuff and flashpoints. From now on, you're only getting development money for new story, new events, new cartel market stuff and maybe the odd flashpoint every now and then. If your players don't play the new raids or ranked pvp, why should we give you money to support it or develop it?"

 

I mean, if people are win-trading, they are participating. They're playing the content.

 

/shrug.

 

In any case, win-trading is going to make a big comeback. So get ready.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...