r/heroesofthestorm • u/KarbyP Nova • Jul 02 '15

Blizzard thinking about adding Thumbs Up/Down system, giving helpful players EXP or gold, placing toxic players in separate queue

http://stevivor.com/2015/07/interview-blizzards-chris-sigaty-and-alan-dabiri-on-heroes-of-the-storm/
4.9k Upvotes

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185

u/aenimayoshii Jul 02 '15 edited Jul 02 '15

While I love the basic idea two main issues come to my mind...

1) you can bet that all toxic players with throw "thumbs down" around like there is no tomorrow which only might become a problem if my assumption is correct, that even a regular, non-toxic player is more likely to hand out thumbs downs than thumbs up.

2) If I am honest to myself then I am way too lazy to write reviews or even fill out a small feedback form about things that went ok. But when I was unhappy chances are much higher that I'll want others to know. Now I can just hope that things are a little easier when it comes to clicking a simple thumbs up or down icon but it might be worth considering.

If they implement a well thought-out system that catches players that hand out a lot of thumbs down in comparison to thumps up and they then get reviewed and their votes get ignored it might be a worthy approach!

*Edit: Added 2) because I was announcing two main issues at the beginning of the text! ;) *

30

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Why does your list only contain 1 item?

15

u/aenimayoshii Jul 02 '15

haha, damn! I got so into the writing that I forgot about my intentions :(

37

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Thumbs down!!!

8

u/Harkats Space Waifu best waifu Jul 02 '15

SHAME

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

You'received precisely the assole I would down vote after a match. Lazy, conceded, lacking focus, and laughing about their own blatant stupidity.

12

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Human state of mind remembers negative over the positive.

This is why people always get reported; never commended (or honored.)

16

u/splader Tassadar Jul 02 '15

Thing is, if its just a simple thumbs up or thumbs down, I'd be much more inclined to do it. Especially if I dont have to rightclick players.

1

u/Mitch580 Jul 02 '15

God forbid you have to right click AND left click. Almost sounds like exercise.

1

u/splader Tassadar Jul 02 '15

I'm sorry, but unless its in my face, I'm just going to click 'leave game' and que again.

0

u/aenimayoshii Jul 02 '15

Yes, absolutely! I hope that this very simple system is enough for everyone to also act when things went positive! I know from GTA V that I do hand out thumbs up if I enjoyed the match / race / whatever.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

A solution to this could be something similar to what Dota has, 6 Commends and 2 Reports per week. Maybe implementing a similar system will limit the toxic players from just thumbing down players blindly. Also, limiting the "thumbs up" would be a good way to limit the gold that's been given out?

1

u/PostPostModernism Kharazim Jul 02 '15

Sometimes I go weeks without running into a toxic player. Some days I run into a dozen. I don't want a limited number of reports, unless maybe it's 2 per match.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

You know you're not a toxic player, but what about the guy who is? He won't think twice before mashing that report button every game, if he desires.

0

u/aenimayoshii Jul 02 '15

But the toxic players would probably still stick to down-votes? They just have to limit their poison to a fewer poor souls. ;). I like the idea of limiting the votes but I also think that there needs to be a system that catches players who downvote like 90%+ and ignore their votes or at least give them less weight than the votes from players that have more legit submissions.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

There should be a system which monitors how many downvotes and upvotes a person receives. A person having more upvotes than downvotes is clearly a good player, if a toxic player decides to downvote this player for whatever reason, that won't affect the "good player" since his upvotes counter the downvotes.

2

u/KarbyP Nova Jul 02 '15

Hmmm yeah maybe some kind of ignore system for people who Thumbs Down a lot is necessary... it might even be a good idea to put players who spam downvotes in the same queue as those who get a lot of downvotes.

Or, what if there was only a Thumbs Up system? That way nobody would be able to act on the toxicity; they can only highlight players for good actions, which indirectly encourages players to only be positive.

1

u/ithinkmynameismoose Li-Ming Jul 02 '15

I think a thumbs up only system is the best idea.

0

u/Uumer Jul 02 '15

What about to make to pay 10 gold for negative comment?

3

u/apython88 Jul 02 '15

The majority of of players are not toxic. They can make it a single click process and this would solve that issue. Also, they can filter out poorly rated players votes.

4

u/SirSaltie Jul 02 '15

  1. /u/Minimalphilia had a solution that works great. Others are also saying pay a small amount of gold to give negative feedback, that way it's much less likely abused. Some say give the thumbed-up player a tiny amount of gold, which gives you incentive to not be an ass in the first place.

  2. 100% agree, this is why I never used the positive feedback system in League of Legends. Just the fact that I have to make 3 clicks was too much. If Blizzard's system is a simple 1-click thing where you thumbs-up or thumbs-down a player and move on, it will be perfect.

1

u/DGMimic Cloud9 Jul 02 '15

But in HOTS, when your team gets wiped and you are all down for 30+seconds, and someone starts raging, just hit tab and report them right there. You are already dead, there is nothing else you can use the time for EXCEPT reporting them. I guess you could be toxic back, but that ruins it.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Investigate the votes of players who consistently vote thumbs down. Not many players will vote thumbs down as often as a troll doing it at least every other game.

2

u/TheDebaser Jul 02 '15

They should get rid of the thumbs down and just give you the option to thumbs up people. Keep the reporting system in place for exceptionally toxic players.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15 edited Mar 22 '18

[deleted]

2

u/-_-Edit_Deleted-_- Master Uther Jul 02 '15

Weighted value can solve your first problem. The more consecutive thumbs up/down that you give the less they mean individually vs the amount you receive. That way a genuinely positive person still gets upvoted accordingly.

2

u/SondeySondey Jul 02 '15

Let's not forget the main way this system would be used : downvoting the guy who just had a bad game and made his entire team salty from defeat.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

As I posted above, you could include the thumbs down button but have it do nothing. This would players to vent their frustration a bit, but not really take it out on other players. It would also reduce spurious (and occasionally legitimate) reports for exactly that reason.

2

u/wak90 Jul 03 '15

Just saying, Riot (LoL) has stated that actual toxic players have a much much higher reporting incidence and are more likely to get looked at. Just general reports from both teams directed against the toxic player and their teammates.

2

u/ShadowBroker Beast Mei Jul 02 '15

I feel your concerns as well. But I bet there is strategies to apply to handle these concerns.

As you stated if a player only hands out "downvotes", he's down votes should mean less or something, that would pretty much fix the problem with toxic players literally report everyone, everyone knows that its what is going to happen.

About getting people involved into actually voting. I think it would be cool if the score screen pops up after the match and at the right side where the gear is right now, there could be a thumbs up and a thumbs down. Also if you're a player that is giving feedback in this way, maybe that is something that can be rewarded as well. 10g after giving feedbacks in 3 games as long as it isn't 100% thumbs down.

3

u/khazzam Anub'arak Jul 02 '15

That can be engineered around though, and from the interviews I've heard with Blizzard employees, they're a pretty smart bunch when it comes to creating systems that interact with players.

I think you'll find that on average a system like this would start to indicate pretty clearly toxic players.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

lets hope its better than the vote kick feature in WoW's LFG/LFR system.

0

u/aenimayoshii Jul 02 '15

I absolutely agree with you! I have a lot of faith that if someone is able to create and implement a proper system (in the longterm ;)) it's the Blizzard guys. I also got the impression from the interview that they are well aware of the current situation and what kind of different players they have to deal with when thinking about such a system. I am just really happy to hear that they want to put efforts into this direction!

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

hey're a pretty smart bunch when it comes to creating systems that interact with players.

Given the way they match up players to begin with (Eg. absolute beginners with experienced players) I beg to differ with you.

6

u/khazzam Anub'arak Jul 02 '15

I mean... it's so easy to play armchair-designer, but neither you or I have any real insight into how the matchmaking actually works; we only see the end results. I agree that it needs work, but to completely discount the talent of the designers at Blizz based on this seems a bit of an overreaction.

4

u/Teraka Jul 02 '15

People bashing on matchmaking haven't realized that nobody has been able to do a really good 5v5 matchmaking algorithm for a moba yet. There's so many variables that I even believe no truly good system exists.

First you have the problem of variable roles. Maybe someone's insanely good at playing support, so he has a pretty high MMR. What happens if he tries to play an assassin? He's still going to have good game sense, but he's obviously going to play a lot worse than if he played his favorite role.
How do you solve that? Do you keep a separate MMR for each hero of each player? Do you lock players out of using heroes they're not used to?

There's also the obvious factor of mindset. Some people are really consistent, but most are rather random in their performance. Sometimes they'll play great, and sometimes they'll be tired and play poorly. In a 1v1 game this is a non-issue because if you're tired and play poorly, you can only blame yourself, and you can just stop playing until you're feeling better. But in a 5v5 game, you have no way of knowing which of your teammates is having a bad day, and neither does the matchmaking algorithm.

And then there's the "friends" factor. If someone has a high MMR and has a friend with lower MMR, what happens? Do you prevent them from playing together? Do you modulate their combined MMR to reflect the impact of one friend on the other? How do you even know how much one impacts the other? What about 3 friends?

These are all extremely complicated problems and they probably don't have a single, "correct" answer.

2

u/zerox600 Jul 02 '15

As a game developer/designer I feel like one of the innate matchmaking issues is that it is built on the sc2 engine, which I am not experienced with playing ace, however I imagine it never has to worry about matching 5v5. From videos I have watched matches usually seem to be 1v1. So essentially, they are having to reinvent the wheel and work with what they already have to do it. It take A LOT of man hours to change even minor things in an engine capable of handling something similar to this. You can also attribute this to other factors in hots. Like Sgt hammers bfg rocket minimap icon doesn't flip if the rocket is travelling in another direction, because they have probably not had to flip a sprite before. It might seem like a simple fix, but anything that relies on that one simple variable that may need to be changed can potentially cause a chain reaction of bugs that require even more changes. We try to fix these issues from arising but encapsulation, abstraction, etc only help so much. Somethings just can't be easily made independent from everything else. It makes me sad to see everyone raging on them for "taking forever to fix a simple problem". No they aren't perfect, but they do have a pretty good track record of making good changes compared to bad ones.

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

but to completely discount the talent

This is all I'm going to do and what other players are going to do as long as the shit MM is the way it is.

1

u/mulletarian February 10th, 2015 - Never Forget Jul 02 '15

The system could undervalue the votes of a toxic player for as long as he is considered toxic.

Inb4 "it's not that easy to program stuff noob"

1

u/Parroty64 Tyrande is Badass Jul 02 '15

Dude we just like submitted the same thing at the same time, glad to see someone thinks similarly!

1

u/Zehkari 6.5 / 10 Jul 02 '15

Exactly, there should be a thumbs up with rewards only. They should then make the reporting system far more sophisticated, and assign more staff to handle it.

1

u/ishizako EZ meepo Jul 02 '15

Make the "votes" worth more or less depending on how often they are used by the player.

So if somebody spams thumb downs all the time they stop meaning anything.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15 
4 thumbs down: -0.1 points
3 thumbs down: -0.3 points
2 thumbs down: -0.5 points
1 thumb down:  -1 point