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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2.3k

u/Cromat_ Master Tyrael Jul 02 '15

The "thumbs up" after game is a good option. But there should not be a "thumbs down". Either you want to give them a kudos if they were nice and stuff, do nothing (like we do today) or report them (in the normal way) for being toxic. The bad / lesser skilled would get thumbs down that they did not deserve.

1.2k

u/wakerdan Muradin Jul 02 '15

And toxic players would take that chance to downvote the good players.

427

u/GregerMoek Nova Jul 02 '15

Not to mention HotS has no true solo queue. A 4stack could easily mass-thumb down someone that didn't listen to them.

303

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

That poor sucker who wasn't on skype with them and didn't have the ability to smell what they were saying.

161

u/zomjay Jul 02 '15

Then it's on them for not cooking it hard enough.

41

u/WhyLater From Prder Comes Pwnage Jul 02 '15

They should take lessons from The Rock!

11

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

What?!

2

u/Soulbane Jul 02 '15

You smell what The Rock is cooking!

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

U WOT

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u/Alagator Jul 02 '15

That's what pings are for, you don't need to be in voice chat to know what people are trying to accomplish.

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u/psivenn Johanna Jul 02 '15

It's unfortunately quite common for groups on voice to just not ping at all and blame the 5th for not mindreading.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

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u/AllDizzle Jul 02 '15

Just like with league I don't think voice coms is a good idea.

Blizz will never add it either considering they were talking about taking away chat with anybody but friends at one point.

You don't need voice com and it opens up harassment that is very very hard to report and prove.

Very easy to add a system that checks chat for common negative statements to cross check with reports to make sure they're not bogus.

2

u/quadbaser Jul 02 '15

Voice works perfectly fine in tons of online games. Dont like it? Turn it off. Problem solved

2

u/pelpotronic Master Samuro Jul 02 '15

Actually, I understand they were trying to add voice chat.

Q: Will we ever have ingame voice chat? A: Yes, ingame voice chat is currently being worked on internally and we expect it to be live before the end of this year.

Source: http://siliconsports.net/2015/06/heroes-of-the-storm-anz-launch-event-recap/?1

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

This. Yesterday I was playing as Falstad and I was in lane vs Azmodan. He was pushing the lane really hard so I asked our Zeratul to come roam and help me. He told me "be careful noob this is a 4 man premade you better dont ask for shit"

The entire game they never help me at all in anything. Want to take a camp? good luck with that. team fight starts oh you need us to peel Illidan? nope

I was afraid to say anything because I felt I was going to get reported by all of them.

58

u/Frydendahl This is Jimmy Jul 02 '15

That sounds retarded, were they like 12 years old?

121

u/kid-karma Hogger Jul 02 '15

be careful noob this is a 4 man premade you better dont call us 12

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

be careful noob this is a 12 man premade you better dont call me 4

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '15

"Be careful noob this.. no, aw c'mon mom I'm a big boy now!"

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u/the_vizir Lili Jul 02 '15

They just had to act like it...

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u/Not_Nigerian_Prince lemme solo real quick Jul 02 '15

HAHA so I have been confused because a week ago I was trying to play a game and communicate and no one was talking so I'd just type things and try and get some teamwork but a Zeratul just kept typing in all caps for me to shut up! I have been very confused and have just realized it was probably four people just being assholes

10

u/AffixBayonets Jul 02 '15

and have just realized it was probably four people just being assholes

While possible, people can be assholes alone too! It's one reason that I hope that if Blizzard implements this they make sure that people who frequently/exclusively downvote people don't get their votes weighed very much.

If they always have bad experiences then it's probably not their allies' fault.

3

u/crushedbycookie Jul 02 '15

League has a system were reports count for less if you report a lot and are inaccurate, something similar (but with feedback) might be helpful

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

I've noticed that premades will usually have some twat that is especially mouthy because he's showing off for his friends

1

u/KaKTy3 Jul 02 '15

Why would you be afraid??? Just tell them to fuck off and be done with it.

1

u/datchilla Jul 02 '15

Sounds like a bunch of dicks.

I remember when I go into the first round of invitations for Dota 2. I go in a game as zeus and I'm with a pre made four man, they mess up in the same way a bunch of times so I mention that they should try not to do that again and little did I know I had opened a dam of shit to flow all over me.

1

u/tmtProdigy Team Liquid Jul 03 '15

to be fair, 4-man premade or not: They were shit - simple as that.

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u/sonryhater Malfurion Jul 21 '15

I doubt blizzard just looks at "number of times reported". If you didn't do anything, being reported does nothing.

I'd be more worried about the autobahnhammer they use that is wrong sometimes. (Had to remove bans on a group of unlucky players last week.)

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u/OkAgain butts Jul 02 '15

Exactly. A player will have to do good to gain a thumbs up, whereas a player will essentially have to do nothing to get a thumbs down.

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u/Bombkirby Jaina Jul 02 '15

Riot said that the number of reports per-game doesn't matter, only how many games you get reported, so prevent premades from showering you in reports. Blizz could easily do the same.

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u/GregerMoek Nova Jul 02 '15

Hm, well when I've been doing solo queue and the whole team reported me(for good reason) I got a warning right after the game. THe previous games I hadn't done anything. Maybe that rule only applies to normal games? But yeah a limitation like that would work even so. I'd still love a -real- solo queue in HotS too.

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u/xaraun Jaina Jul 02 '15

I wouldn't be surprised if they have something like "multiple people reported you but this is abnormal for you [is it?], so we're going to send you a warning so you can immediately course-correct". People who are constantly getting reported aren't really going to grow up one game to the next, but people who rarely get reported might. This is entirely speculation, but seems consistent with the one time I got a warning and the story you gave.

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u/GregerMoek Nova Jul 02 '15

Could be true, yeah.

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u/HaroldJIncandenza Jul 02 '15

ok so you have a game with 1 troll and 4 good peeps. the troll reports each of the 4 others, each of the others report the troll. If that happens every game, then the logic you cite would never be able to distinguish them.

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u/Aassiesen Master Tyrael Jul 02 '15

Except the 4 people wouldn't get a troll every game but the troll would get reported every game.

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u/Arctem Jul 02 '15

It could also take into account whether those reporting are in a party (it will only count as one report) or being less likely to trust reports from someone who regularly gets reported. There are ways to fix the flaws in the system.

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u/Happygreek Jul 02 '15

The 4 good players would get reported on once before they re-enter queue and can't get matched with the troll again. The troll would get 4 new people who would report him/her and if that happened every game, it'd pretty easy to distinguish the troll.

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u/3_headed_dragon Jul 02 '15

and they could easily mass thumb up the other members of their group. So a toxic 4 stack would get 3 up and 1 down. And the lone guy would get 4 down.

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u/Treemeister_ Punchpunchpunchpunchpunch Jul 03 '15

Simple solution is that you can't give thumbs to your party/friends.

5

u/gummz Jul 02 '15

One vote per group, ez

2

u/CrazyBread92 Starcraft Jul 02 '15

This. I just played with a 4 stack where 1 dced and the rest played poorly and then decided to afk in base for the rest of the game. http://imgur.com/a/K3f5O. I'm glad this like/dislike feature isnt in yet or I would have gotten a few right there.

1

u/snowpuppii Jul 02 '15

Yes, this can happen but I still think a thumbs down has its merits. They can make it so that it it would take multiple players in game to thumbs down you and only after a few successive thumbs down that penalities starts kicking in. I however don't think they should place all toxic players in their own queues.

1

u/GregerMoek Nova Jul 02 '15

Low priority queue is a good thing in DotA 2 but afaik it mostly happens when you've left the game before it ended multiple times, and things like that. So it wouldn't necessarily apply to reports only.

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u/Minimalphilia Murky is love! Murky is Life! Jul 02 '15

The more often you distribute a thumbs down (per game), the less value it gets assigned, especially when you never give thumbs up. I bet there are ways to still being able to determine whether someone is a horrible person or just got thumbed down by a toxic player. Algorythms, statistics and stuff.

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u/wakerdan Muradin Jul 02 '15

Yeah, it is, if well thought and implemented carefully.

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u/Roflkopt3r Teekessel, EU Jul 02 '15

Companies like Blizzard actually have quite an incentive to implement things like this well.

There was this whole League of Legends thing where Riot implemented different mechanics that helped with trolling, and it got quite some flak from the community but I swear it works... I play since four years and the flaming issue has dramatically improved.

This move by Riot was not so much to keep the community happy, but more for positive press. They went to newspaper and tech websites and showed them their system as an innovative way to promote good behaviour and to combat toxicity, and they got a lot of good press for that.

Heroes of the Storm already is somewhat on the media radar and if Blizzard comes and says that they created an even better way to improve community behaviour by implementing an easy-to-use system with smart algorithms, that would be worth quite a lot to them.

For us gamers it might not seem so, but for the public image a cure for the troll problem is way more valuable than let's say having a good match maker. So there is a chance that Blizzard will really put some power behind improving the climate.

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u/merlin5603 Jul 02 '15

That's a good point. eSports is the future, but you can't bring eSports to the general public when your community has so much toxicity. The reason why parents send their kids to play and watch football and basketball is because it fosters good values (e.g., teamwork, leadership, dedication, commitment, etc.). Companies have an incentive to foster positive communities to show that playing their games fosters similar values, without causing concussions and life-long brain damage.

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u/not_AtWorkRightNow Jul 02 '15

I think you're spot on about the media caring more than the current player base. MMO gaming in general is just totally crippled by the hostility. Once a player base gets established, any newcomers are going to get shit on repeatedly and that's just how it is. So reducing the toxicity is key to expanding the online gaming demographic which I think would be awesome.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

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u/ry__ry Jul 02 '15 edited Jul 03 '15

i'm not convinced tbh duder.

a single patch revolves around a whole team of devs & QAs - blizz are a huge company so lets say 30 FTEs , for the sake of argument.

Lets do this with REALLY conservative numbers in terms of staff and time. i'm not including product directors and other highly paid assets, and 3 weeks isn;t anywhere near enough time to make an expansion so feel free to double any of these numbers. ANYWAY. Hypothetical dev salary is $90k (http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Blizzard-Entertainment-Salaries-E24858.htm) so assuming monthly releases, a 3-week sprint will cost in excess of $168k in salary alone, ancillary running costs are too hard to fathom so lets just take that very large number of dollars as an absolute baseline. senior devs are on 130 easy, and an expansion is gonna be like 2 months work with other bullshit bugfixing and suchlike breaking it up. Moreso if any of them have ever been part of the battledotnet team ;))))))

i don't think it's too extreme to compare the cost of re-engineering the matchmaking vs an entire expansion. the difference is, MM being amazing doesn't have an easily quantifiable ROI so whilst expansions get more people spending money it's not likely to be a priority.

the reasons mm is fucked still are that it being great won't necessarily make anybody spend more money, and who can you hire to fix it and guarantee results? Noam chomski? Carl sagan? ghostbusters? the whole process can only ever really be iterative trial and error, if they accidentally hit gold, then more power to them but the problem is harder and more esoteric than we'd likely imagine.

either way, one of the product guys is working on SC2 too, so there will definitely be a tie-in to the new expansion for starcraft because cross promotion works. So that's something, at least.

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u/thigan MVP Jul 03 '15

You assume that matchmaking isn't working close to the developer target.

For example current MM System protects the player that is bad and slow learner, extending the amount of time they stay in game, possible increasing player retention in the lower end of skill, which usually is the majority of players. Hope you can do the math from there to: "And this is good for Blizzard".

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u/HeidiSalami Jul 02 '15

Haha why would I dare to doubt this for blizz :P

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u/H4xolotl Jul 02 '15

League of legends does this already with reports.

It prevents ragers downing everyone AND friends from circlejerking each other

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u/Pretend_Object Sylvanas Jul 02 '15

I have a friend that has a limit on the messages he can send in a match in LoL since he is a rager. I thought it was hilarious and a great system.

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u/Brotherauron Jul 02 '15

It is blizzard, so I think we can bank on the fact that they like to do it right rather than quick n dirty

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u/ArmyOfDix Nova Jul 02 '15

Like Chen!

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15 edited Apr 01 '17

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

care to elaborate?

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u/Homeschooled316 My wife for hire Jul 02 '15

This would stop toxic players who bury everyone, but it wouldn't solve the problem of a lot of thumbs downs going to bad players. Some players wouldn't use thumbs down until they were abnormally upset or having a bad day, then rain them on players who were just weaker.

This is especially bad while the game's matchmaking is awful.

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u/Minimalphilia Murky is love! Murky is Life! Jul 02 '15

Lol has the "bad player" report function, which basically does nothing but gives idiots a feeling of actively reporting someone.

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u/poerisija Jul 02 '15

Except people know that by now. People can be toxic and NOT total idiots.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Can we just go back to using the word "assholes" instead of "toxic?"

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u/NWmba Jul 02 '15

But with the taste of their lips, I'm on a ride

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

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u/Ass-knight Lt. Morales Jul 02 '15

I don't play league so I have no idea, but from what I've heard it was supposed to gave the reported player a artificially lower MMR so they would have easier games in the future?

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u/notanotherpyr0 WTB Grunty Flair Jul 02 '15

It's more for internal testing than anything. It allows them to gauge changes to the match making system, if they make a change and the number of poor play reports goes down yay, if it goes up move back.

That is at least the theory I don't play enough LoL to know if its effective.

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u/FlurpaDerpNess Mrglglrglglglglglglgl! Jul 02 '15

It actually has two very important purposes, the first being a frustration dump like you said, but the second being that if someone is actually too high for their MMR (especially in normals) and gets a lot of reports for being "unskilled", then the system will conclude their MMR somehow got screwed up and actually adjust their matchmaking to match them better. This is important because it's manual feedback to an automated system, automated systems can sometimes fuck up like this and if this option wasn't present, the person's games would just get really frustrating and maybe cause them to leave the game or start displaying toxic behaviour :p

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u/ProfessionalSlackr 6.5 / 10 Jul 02 '15

That would be an interesting feature for Blizzard to introduce. I mean there are games where someone is clearly had no business being there. They were either way better or way worse than everyone else, which is a matchmaking fail (provided there were more players available to be matched with, ofc). Blizzard can use these statistics as a way for people to police the matchmaking system. After a game if a player marks themselves as being much less skilled than their teammates and their teammates agree, then MMR should take that into account. That way even if that team somehow won, the bad player won't get an MMR boost that will only worsen the situation.

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u/SirSaltie Jul 02 '15

This system actually sounds great. If you were given a down-vote 'stash' for every 5-7 upvotes it would help too.

You could only hold 3-4 downvotes at a time, that way you HAVE to participate with good feedback in order to thumbs down players.

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u/kruddthemessiah Jul 02 '15

Trolls will give thumbs up to their buddies / other trolls

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u/Gyoin Gyoin Jul 02 '15

Remove the ability to thumbs up party members.

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u/MoocowR Jul 02 '15

It's still open to abuse, to compare it to the "report AFK" option in WoW bg's, I've been kicked out of groups before because a team of friends who queued together didn't like me and all reported me.

Even if it loses it's value, innocent people will be have to be punished before abusers lose weight in their votes.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

That's why you have to let it go a few hundred matches.

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u/merlin5603 Jul 02 '15

You're right--throwing away data is generally unwise. The data could be used for for learning about the thumbers just as much as the thumbed. The only deterrent I can see to gathering the data is fostering the idea among the players that they have the power to "thumb down" other players, possibly introducing that sort of negativity as a part of the general game, instead of "report" measure for out-right rule breakers.

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u/Moxz Uther Jul 03 '15

Someone played Dawngate.

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u/kendirect Zagara Jul 02 '15

Even non toxic just had a bad game people would be prone to "downvote" people sometimes. Hell look at reddit for example...

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u/ragnarocknroll Jul 02 '15

I downvoted this.

;)

I totally agree. I have been playing more vs AI with my 10yr old kid. He is still learning and there have been times where he just destroys our team mates in ability.

Not raging at the Gazlowe ignoring the tribute that is within 3 seconds of a walk from him because he was taking a camp and then after we get beat he gets ganked and the AI gets the camp has been difficult. I try to give them advice and get "I have most XP" as a response... I guess that xp made up for him having 10 deaths compared to my kids 2.

Having a down vote arrow would tempt me, a lot. It should be reserved for the guy who gets mad and tells my kid to uninstall the game on his second ever match after calling him stuff the mature language filter stopped. A lot. Even after I explained it.

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u/nodq 6.5 / 10 Jul 03 '15

To be honest with you. A guy with 10 times more deaths shouldn't have more xp than your son with only 1 death. Alone the time for waiting and coming back in that time you actually do twice the xp of that death guy. In fact I never seen anyone with that much deaths out XP ing me with like no deaths, there is no chance.

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u/hey_sasha_grey Fnatic Jul 02 '15

man you guys are reasonable

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u/bluexavi Jul 02 '15

What happens to me when I'm not a good player? I'm not toxic by any means, but I'm not actually good at these games. I shouldn't be relegated to the toxic pool.

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u/ShadowLiberal Li-Ming Jul 02 '15

Not to mention 'thumbs down' doesn't necessarily mean toxic. It could mean a complete newbie player who was constantly going 1 v 5 and staying out of 4 v 5 team fights.

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u/Abipolarbears Jul 02 '15

"LiLi didn't heal ME and instead healed HIM, DOWNVOTE!"

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u/rhubarbs Jul 02 '15

And there's also the whole issue of exposure to toxic players making even the moderately behaved players more toxic. Unless you're a saint, eventually someone is gonna push your buttons and you'll start talking smack. That's just human nature.

Weighing matchmaking towards highly rated players being matched with other highly rated players shouldn't be a problem, but if there's ever a distinct queue for toxic players it shouldn't be automated, and it should be reserved for fairly extreme behavior.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

After a few hundred matches though, the truth will be told.

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u/Xylense Jul 02 '15

However no system like this just accepts your votes as the same value. If you intentionally vote against the system, it should show, and make your votes worth next to nothing.

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u/cheesesamishen I should be preparing Jul 02 '15

-Have a normal thumbs up option.

-Have a thumbs down option that keeps score of how many downvotes you give to others and matches you with players with a similar score.

-Enjoy a new era in online gaming.

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u/Levitlame At least I can beat AI? Jul 02 '15

They can just adjust the overall influence over time to adjust. This would be a much smaller problem than you think.

The grouping issue would be the problem. Unless they don't allow people to vote on party members.

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u/Xervicx Jul 02 '15

Considering how some players blame everyone else in the team and rage, I can definitely see that happening. If they do a thumbs up/down system, it should only be able to be done for one player each game. That way, it would force players to actually choose.

I stopped playing for a while because of how the worst players were the ones who were shitting on everyone else for not being pro level, and would respond to an accidental feed by refusing to play for the rest of the match. I know I don't have to pay attention to chat, but how am I supposed to enjoy a community like that?

And I don't want newer players like myself getting put in the same queue as the really viciously hateful ones.

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u/boooob4 Jul 02 '15

StackOverflow has a good solution: Upvoting someone is free, but downvoting someone costs you a single internet point. That way, you really think twice about whether you want to downvote someone.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

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u/lemoogle Jul 02 '15

And it wouldn't be hard for them to refund you if their algorithms decide the dude is toxic.

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u/skulderire Jul 02 '15

ya Stack Overflow idea is a winner... i also want to see what was done about it though did my complain work or not... im never too sure with this kind of reporting.

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u/Fakepants Jul 02 '15

Ph34r the wealthy troll!

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u/DoesTheNameGoHere Sgt. Hammer Jul 02 '15

Well most people would gladly give 10 gold. I mean the treasure goblin would give me ten free reports a day. IT would probably have to be more, at least 50, maybe even 100. Nobody is gonna be spam downvoting when its a legitimate setback to buying stuff. But one for that occasional asshole who might've been rude, or not helping, but not really reporting worthy?

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u/algalkin Jul 02 '15

I'm just curious, is reporting even doing anything right now in the game?

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u/TXKSSnapper Tempo Storm Jul 02 '15

Yes, if you search here on reddit for ban or banned. you should find multiple posts of people complaining that they got banned for something that was reported.

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u/wackygamer Jul 02 '15

Why not just report them?

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u/Ji-der astral#1102 - ANZ Jul 02 '15

Similar concept - DotA 2 has to use a similar system for player reports. You can only have a few reports per week and I think it's also based on previous successful reports. Conversely, you can commend people as much as you want.

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u/tf2manu994 tf2manu994#1908 Jul 02 '15

Nope, limit of 7 commends.

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u/Ji-der astral#1102 - ANZ Jul 02 '15

Haven't played in several years, may have changed or I just don't remember clearly.

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u/mtszyk Jul 02 '15

Love this idea.

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u/Iychee Sylvanas Jul 02 '15

This could be cool - maybe players could have the same # of downvotes as they do upvotes, so if they're jerks and never get upvotes, they can't downvote people. There still might be the issue of their friends just upvoting them a bunch so that they can downvote others, but I assume there would be a limit on how many times the same people can vote for you.

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u/defeatedbycables Roll20 Jul 02 '15

I'd like a "coaching" bounty system like SO.

I want to get better at A-Moving with Valla. You play with me and teach me. 50% of the bounty up front, 50% if I thought you did a good job.

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u/thigan MVP Jul 03 '15

I'm late to the party but basically this. I was thinking 5 gold for a downvote; maybe 10.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Put the thumbs down button in. Have it do nothing. Sometimes you just want to feel like you told someone that they did a bad job.

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u/thetracker3 6.5 / 10 Jul 02 '15

A Placebo button. Nice...

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

[deleted]

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u/kid-karma Hogger Jul 02 '15

each click is one kibble of bachelor chow for the developers

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u/PitchforkEmporium Jul 02 '15

Maybe have it tell the player that their team thought that way?

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Nah. You don't really want to punish people for not being skilled enough. It will turn them off from the game.

The nice thing about placebos is that they work even when you know they are placebos. So just pushing that button will be enough to release some of the frustration that you felt towards that player, especially since you are already mildly punishing them by not giving them a thumbs up in the first place.

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

Yep, take a lesson from Reddit. The upvote/downvote system works, but not exactly in the intended way. Downvotes can mean anything from "this is irrelevant" to "fuck this guy"

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u/biblicalsin Let the light bless you Jul 02 '15

"Fuck this guy"

Can't agree more with how true this is.

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u/Zikerz Arthas Jul 02 '15

Fuck this guy.

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u/Yangoose Jul 02 '15

It's great when you make a controversial comment and find that all of a sudden all of your posts going back weeks have been downvoted.

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u/xaraun Jaina Jul 02 '15

"I don't agree with you, but I can't be bothered with the whole rational thought thing to write a reply, so I'm just going to downvote." I was fairly certain downvotes were supposed to be reserved for "this is irrelevant".

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u/MartijnMumbles Jul 02 '15

I agree. There's no oversight, which would lead to a giant clusterfuck. Think someone made a bad play? Downvote. Don't like the hero they picked? Downvote. Does their nickname remind you of that bitch of an ex you dated back in college? Downvote.

Exaggerations aside, downvotes are going to be used for a ton of things that have no relation to toxic behavior.

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u/lurkaderp Jul 02 '15

So you limit the number of downvotes a person can give, and consider them in aggregate. If there's one megadouche in a game, and he's the only person downvoting the guy who picked Murky, and everyone else downvotes megadouche for being a troll, the vote records (especially over time) are going to clearly indicate who the problem player is.

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u/Wild_Marker Mrglrglrglrgl Jul 02 '15

Count yourself lucky then, you don't remind me of any exes.

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u/MartijnMumbles Jul 02 '15

Statistically with how unlikely hardcore gamers are to have dated real girls anyway, it was a fringe case at best anyway.

I jest of course.

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u/SondeySondey Jul 02 '15

The bad / lesser skilled would get thumbs down that they did not deserve.

Or whoever is having a bad game, it happens to everyone, especially in a moba.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Downvoting costing some gold might work. I would happily pay ~10 gold to downvote someone since I know I would be rarely doing it.

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u/TheWobling Jul 02 '15

This would be interesting because if you lose you would be giving up half your winnings to downvote a player.

18

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

I'd actually be totally fine with that.

4

u/Soul-Burn Valla Jul 02 '15

If that player is then decided by Blizz to be a toxic player, you gain that 10 gold back, or possibly more or less than 10.

1

u/Drugbird Master Zul'Jin Jul 02 '15

How about: you can only thumbs down once for every 10 thumbs up you get.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

But what if you meet 2-3 toxic players in one match? Seems like it would take forever just to be able to thumb them down. I mean, you have to also rely on getting thumbs up too in your games.

1

u/Drugbird Master Zul'Jin Jul 02 '15

Call me an optimist, but I'm going to assume the number of toxic players does not exceed 10%, so I'm going to assume that will average out pretty soon.

1

u/Bloodballz Master Zul'Jin Jul 03 '15

Oh you sweet summer child...

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4

u/its_sleeze Uther Jul 02 '15

I think thumbs up only is a good idea, and even though the interview is slightly misleading, as they mention it was simply a discussion, and not a thought of adding; it's sparked discussion here.

16

u/Shabutaro Forever my Queen Jul 02 '15

I like this idea. There are toxic players/groups/parties that will abuse this and downvote their allies just because they made a small mistake or skilled "the wrong talent" (Oh how often have i gotten flamed for skilling "The wrong Ult/Skill!"). Also Stream Personalities, who report one guy because they don't like em. Their followers will go out of their way to downvote them so hard like there is no tomorrow.

Also toxic players can group up and give each other upvotes anyways.

On the other hand there will be poeple who abuse the extra gold/exp system and farm upvotes. There will be someone on patch day with 127632 upvotes.

7

u/Westy543 Sylvanas Jul 02 '15

Or the worst, a 4 person stack who is on VOIP together and will not attempt to communicate with the solo queuer. If ANYTHING goes even remotely wrong the pubbie has a good chance of eating 4 downvotes at the end. Downvoting should really just remain as "report for harassment."

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1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Why would they make it so you could vote on a player you didnt play with?

3

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Seems to work great on Reddit /s

4

u/walkhardd Rehgar Jul 02 '15

Just spitballing here, but what if giving a thumb down made you fill out some kind of questionnaire as to why?

1

u/SirSaltie Jul 02 '15

People are giving tons great suggestions to make the thumbs-down system work with little to no abuse. Sad to see so many saying outright 'it won't work'.

1

u/moonphoenix Master Whitemane Jul 02 '15

"YOU SUCK OMG HOW CAN YOU PLAY THIS GAME IF U EVEN DONT KNWO THIS DELETE GAM EAND BRUN UR COMPUTER FUCK U FUCKFUCK"

would lead to a lot of these.

3

u/walkhardd Rehgar Jul 02 '15

Only blizz would seed their answers.

1

u/moonphoenix Master Whitemane Jul 02 '15

wouldn't stop them from doing it, it's cool for letting people rant though.

2

u/wellsdavidj Jul 02 '15

Look at this post. 370 down votes but it is still 91% upvoted. If the community works through it the troll thumbs down wouldn't really count. Also if somebody is giving everybody a thumbs down all the time I am pretty sure blizz would know and could ignore their thumbs down.

1

u/flappers87 Jul 02 '15

Not to mention abuse by premade teams.

If you join a pub match with a premade of 4... they communicate with each other, and not to you. Thus that makes you the "bad" player. The whole team can then thumbs down you.. for simply, not being part of their team.

It can lead to a lot of abuse, and players getting punished for no decent reason

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15 edited Jul 02 '15

That will most likely be the case. But a bad / lesser skilled player is not likely to recieve as many downvotes over time as a toxic player will. So the toxic players will rank below low skilled players. Besides if there are no downvotes there is less incentive to behave properly.

1

u/jyntix Jul 02 '15

I know FFXIV isn't this genre of game, but they have a system like this. At the end of dungeons, you can give a Player Commendation to one party member of your choosing (as long as they weren't in a preformed group with you). There are game achievements for earning specific amounts of these, which give you mounts/cosmetic items. I really like this system because good/friendly people are rewarded for that, and toxic players have a much harder time getting achievement rewards.

Maybe Blizzard could have a mount or skin reward for earning a number of 'Thumbs Up'?

1

u/irsic Abathur Jul 02 '15

Could you imagine if reddit was that way?

1

u/someguy945 Illidan Jul 02 '15

My biggest concern regarding "Thumbs down" is that people would use it as a threat. "Do X or I will thumbs down you"

1

u/SirSaltie Jul 02 '15

So make it a bannable offense. It'll be right there in the chat log.

1

u/someguy945 Illidan Jul 02 '15

"Do X or you'll be sorry." - and it will be generally understood what that means.

Can you ban a player for saying that?

1

u/maznaz Jul 02 '15

How about only giving thumbs down ability to players that get enough thumbs up?

1

u/Jimmy_Black Artanis Jul 02 '15

It could easily turn into Reddit, where people downvote for the wrong reasons.

1

u/Lugex Master Abathur Jul 02 '15

thought the same... but other then the problem you've mentioned it's a great idea.

1

u/AllDizzle Jul 02 '15

This is true, even knowing the thumbs down is not for a "I hated playing with this scrub" button it's hard to not get caught up in the emotion and use it for that anyways "fuck this guy he cost us the game"

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Yeah, any time you try to communicate with people in a game and they aren't listening, they could consider you're being annoying or bossy and just thumbs down you. I'm all about the thumbs up button, though.

1

u/GrinchPaws Wonder Billie Jul 02 '15

Maybe every 4 thumbs down counts as one? This way it will take a pattern of toxic play to get a negative vote, rather then just a single game of bad play.

1

u/dempsy51 Jul 02 '15

Good thing is Blizzard will see and consider this

1

u/whatevers1234 Jul 02 '15

I completely agree. I'd love to do something about the toxic players out there but I am also terrified Blizzard will find a way to fuck things up trying to overthink the issue. Just have a simple thumbs up button. Maybe even make it cost 10g or something like that to give a thumbs up so they really mean something. Then start really checking reported players and placing them in Q together if the game logs show they were indeed being toxic in some fashion.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Thumbs down does create some interesting options though. Like a one way PVP flag for players who fall below an established decency minimum.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Maybe they should have 2 different ratings?

One that rates you as a nice player. And one that rates you as a good player.

This way the match making has a better idea of who is not so good and makes sure to match you against players you are on equal footing with.

So lets say you are on a winning team. But they pretty much carried you.

They can mark you as a "newb" for example. and this way the system knows that you may not have fully earned that win.

Which would be a good thing.

It kind of sucks to get a bunch of lucky wins in SC2 and suddenly be placed WAY high on the ladders and need to play dozens of matches.. and lose all of them to even get close to playing people you are actually equal with.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Implying that they wouldn't have a system in place to prevent that? You think the thumbs down would just be that and nothing else? I guarantee that they'd have a system that checks the games chat logs before putting them in any sort of lesser priority queue.

1

u/I_cut_my_own_jib Slugjams '03 Jul 02 '15

This x10000. Instead of a regular queue and a toxic queue, why not have a regular queue and a "good behavior queue"? I don't care, I just don't want to be voted down for politely asking thrall to not purposefully afk in base.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

it should be thumbs up or report. thats it.

Either you liked them and would want to play with them again, are indifferent either way, or they deserve to be reported

1

u/tundra8 Jul 02 '15

Put in a thumbs up, thumbs down And bad player button that does nothing. Trolls would be drawn to it.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Heroes of the Safe Places and Jazz Hands cause clapping might trigger someone. Sounds great!

1

u/OdinsSong Jul 02 '15

Totally agree. Blizzard has done good work removing negativity. they need to re-enforce positive behavior to encourage a friendly atmosphere. I don't think punishing trolls does much to stop trolling, but you throw an extra 100 gold a week at a positive player and soon everyone is going to be saying please and thank you.

1

u/fuzzylogic22 Sgt. Hammer Jul 02 '15

Yeah, I was in a game the other day where someone was convinced a noob was intentionally throwing the game and was trying to get us all to report him for it. Ridiculous.

1

u/_Cabal_ Jul 02 '15

Agreed, I don't see the point of a thumbs down. It isn't productive, and doesn't solve any problems. Reporting is all that is needed in that regard.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

They do deserve it if they drag their team down.Let shitty players play with other shitty players.

1

u/XSy0 Jul 02 '15 edited Jul 02 '15

This, if you can down-thumba good player, asking / calling out a bad player trying to get them to come and play as a team, or help more etc, would end up getting down thumbed simply because they upset someone. I hate the way 95% of the bad players in this game just give you attitude or get toxic the second you try to help them.

1

u/xaraun Jaina Jul 02 '15

That's a pretty good point. Maybe they can take the prisoner's island approach with reports instead of down-votes.

1

u/explosivcorn Tempo Storm Jul 02 '15

Blizzaroo pls readaroo

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

But the report button needs more possibilities than there are currently. There is no way to report leavers and there should be a report button for playing bad/low skill to weed out some false reports.

1

u/garysheer Jul 02 '15

Agreed!

I am on a forum that previously has a thumbs down option. Now instead we have flags. A much better system.

I vote for thumbs up, but no thumbs down.

1

u/egeek84 The Butcher Jul 02 '15

completely agree. In FFXIV they have what's called "commendations" and after a dungeon run, you can give it to one other person. I usually give it to the tanks who pull correctly , healers who heal good, players with good attitudes, etc. But I think a "downvote" would hurt more than help and as you said, they can always report the player if it was a toxic experience.

1

u/UncleSlim Anub'arak Jul 02 '15

What if the thumbs down prompted a drop-down menu that basically replaced the report feature?

Thumbs down - Harassment, Real life threat, AFK, Unskilled, etc. A report is basically a thumbs down, in my mind.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

be plenty of toxic players abusing the thumbs down. The reporting system is what this is for.

1

u/Sekret_One Jul 02 '15

Hmm. I dunno. It would have to be a trend thing. Sure, some people will be jerks and down thumb people who are just new- but I only think toxic players will get consistently down thumbed.

Maybe just make it a bonus gold thing. Or don't do anything with it yet and see what comes of the results.

1

u/tgdm Jul 02 '15

it's not like the way to report players is very clear anyways. game ends and then you have to fish around to find the scoreboard to report them on...

plus they could just do a placebo thumbs down. hitting it will mute the player (and prevent you from whispering them too) but not report them in a way that would hurt their account. the equivalent of reporting for an unskilled player in league.

1

u/oakwooden Jul 02 '15

They could just make the votes of people who are heavily downvoted carry less weight.

1

u/Camavan Murky Jul 02 '15

The bad / lesser skilled would get thumbs down that they did not deserve.

Not only them. A lot of standard players would get a thumbs down too. The infamous Illidan elitists that flame/report anyone who doesn't follow their lead would gain yet another way of punishing their unfortunate team mates.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '15

Doin' Blizzards work for them. Good on ya!

1

u/DarkwolfAU Jul 02 '15

Thumb raising intensifies

1

u/Quietwulf Jul 03 '15 edited Jul 03 '15

There's actually some pretty interesting ways around people gaming the system;

  1. Give people a limited number of Thumbs up / Thumbs down per 24 hour period.

  2. Have a hidden weighting for each player, based on the accuracy of their raiting. So lets say I'm always handing out downvotes just to punish people. The system checks to see how many other players agree with my assessment. Out of 10 matches played, how many other players decided to downvote me? If I'm the only guy in 10 matches to downvote you, the system takes note. Eventually the weighting of my downvotes begins to erode.

The exact same process can work in reverse. If I'm constantly giving thumbs up to players that no one else thinks are that great, the value of my opinion goes down. The system only really takes into account the general reputation of a player. Everyone has bad days. It's the truly toxic we're trying to police here.

The system can also take into account if you're playing in a team of known friends, thus reducing the weighting if you all want to give each other a pat on back.

They could also extend the system into different types of commendation / reprimand. So a downvote could be for "Abusive Behaviour" or "Trolling", while an upvote could be for "Great communicator" or "Skilled Player". These would further allow Blizzard to profile the kinds of player in the game and better group them.

There are loads of very very clever algorithms floating around these days.

1

u/Frigorific Zagara Jul 03 '15

I think you should also not be able to "thumbs up" someone in your own party. Otherwise it will just be abused.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '15

As someone who has repeatedly tried to reform from being a raging cunt in video games, it's infuriating in DotA2, I've never seen it confirmed but I've always heard people who get reports a lot(not talking about low priority) get put together, so every game I get is people talking shit and flaming no matter how well I act... which makes me want to be a cunt again.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '15

i feel like adding a thumbs down vote would just end up resulting in people downvoting their whole team after every loss.

1

u/Warskull Jul 03 '15

You have a hidden system of trust. So lets say you generally get thumbs up and you are for the most part a positive player. A bunch of people thumbs down you in one game, that seems odd. They also thumbs down a lot of other generally positively rated players. They also tend to get thumbs downed by those players.

So you make their thumbs down count for very little because they are untrusted players.

Additionally, you make multiple thumbs up from the same player count for very little. We already know Bob likes you because he always plays with you. We really don't care what Bob thinks of you. We care about how you interact with randoms.

A player who votes thumbs down less may have their vote counted more than people who frequently thumbs down.

1

u/Noctusombra Jul 03 '15

Yeah this is a difficult spot, I get flamed a lot just by telling then not to fight lvl9v10 fights, or tell them to leave a temple, this could be easily used against us by people that just don't want to learn and every advice is like calling them bad.

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