Overwatch Preps Ban System Changes For Toxic Players

It all began with one player’s cavalier post on the official Blizzard forums titled “lol I just got game banned for a week on my main in quickplay.” The post, now downvoted to all hell along with the rest of the original poster’s replies in the thread, complained, “The system is clearly automated and abusable,” and asked, “How do you even be disruptive in quickplay?”

Many community members were quick to note that quick play was not some kind of chaotic rumpus where you could run about in blissful derangement without consequences. Forum user kirsch replied in one highly-rated post: “Of course quick play is meant to be taken seriously. where did the rules say they only apply to competitive mode?”

While some forum users tried to see things the original poster’s way, most agreed that the OP was less than sympathetic, especially when the banned player admitted in a now-deleted reply, “I already got muted for a year.”

That’s when game director Jeff Kaplan swept in like a Valkyrie:

“We checked the IP address of the account you posted from and found a suspended account,” wrote Kaplan. “That account has a total of 2247 complaints filed against it -- making it one of the worst offending accounts we've seen. The account has also been silenced for a total of 9216 hours. There are 3 gameplay suspensions on the account as well as 7 silences against this account (these are for abusive chat and/or spam). There is also a manual GM account suspension for ’massive griefing’ levied.

“Someone from your IP has been a less-than-ideal OW citizen,” Kaplan concluded in his characteristically mild tone.

Kaplan also invited the original poster to share their BattleTag if they were referring to another account. “The last thing we want is good, upstanding members of the community being punished unfairly,” said Kaplan.

While the roast was absolutely delightful, other forum members noted that the original poster’s laundry list of egregious offenses seemed to have come to no particular consequence. “This is fun, but why is someone with 2000 complaints against it not banned?” asked forum user Nessuno as other users did the math on the original poster’s douchebaggery.

“Why does over 2k reports only amount to 3 gameplay suspensions and 7 silences when he has been ruining games for 2247 people and more because not everyone even reports?” asked another frustrated forum user.

In a different thread titled “Report system is a failure,” Kaplan responded to these questions. “The reporting and punishment system is currently one of our prime focuses. You will be seeing a developer update about this very soon,” said Kaplan. He then went on to explain Blizzard’s short-term, medium-term and long-term goals for the banning, report and punishment system’s much-needed overhaul.

In the short-term, “We are re-evaluating every punishment and are in the process of converting silences over to suspensions. We're also increasing the length of suspensions,” said Kaplan. Soon, silences will be gone and there will only be suspensions and bans except in special instances.

The team is also testing an email notification system to let players know that an action has been taken based on their report. “We cannot provide a lot of detail in these emails but they only go out if an action has taken place (meaning your report contributed to someone getting suspended),” said Kaplan.

Finally, Kaplan shared that “a number of accounts” were banned for boosting in Season 5 and will lose all Season 5 rewards.

In the medium-term, “we're looking to completely ban repeated Competitive offenders meaning if you've been banned for more than X seasons, we will ban you from ever playing competitive again,” said Kaplan. The team is also working on expanding email notifications “to other forms of reporting” and adding in-game notifications of actioned reports “to let you know that your reports are doing something.”

In Season 6, the team will focus on detecting boosting, throwing and other SR manipulation. The team has also devised “a new series of punishments… that escalates much more quickly (so you don't have egregious cases like the one you're referencing),” said Kaplan. “Basically, extreme offenders will ‘strike out’ of the game much quicker. As part of these increasing punishments, we're looking to make it so that offenders get blocked from Competitive play much sooner -- more details on this as we get closer.”

But in the long term, Kaplan prefers to create a system that “encourage[s] positive behavior and reward[s] good players” rather than tweaking punishment systems and banhammers.

“It really bums us out to spend so much time punishing people for being bad sports. We like making cool, fun game systems -- that's what we do for a living,” said Kaplan. “But because people seem to lack self-control or because people like to abuse anonymity and free speech we're put in a position of spending a tremendous amount of our time and resources policing the community.

“We will do this as it is our responsibility but we'd like to spend more time rewarding good players rather than having to focus on poor sportsmanship and unacceptable bad behavior so much,” Kaplan concluded.

Overwatch players on consoles only just received the ability to report other players. If a toothless reporting system transforms into one with a lot more bite, the game may become less frustrating to play. It’s also good to know that players will receive notifications on actioned reports, reducing the feeling of frustration that comes with sending reports into the void and still seeing trollers, griefers and other scum ruining your game.

What do you think about the upcoming changes to Overwatch ’s punishment systems? Is Kaplan’s dream of systems that reward positivity and good sportsmanship ever going to come true or is the Overwatch community just too toxic? Feel free to let us know your thoughts in our comments section below.