The report button.

At this point, Volvo either needs to improve it or remove it.

The report feature was intended to punish players who purposefully attempt to annoy allies, be a *insert B-word here* to enemies, or just be toxic (OMG I SAID TOXIC. LEAGUE OF LEGENDS RECRUIT ME) in general.

Now it has become something so simple as: "Omg this guy is bad at the game! Let's make it worse for him by being shoved into low prio for no reason!"

More recently, I was playing with an autoattacking Maiden. I still got as many LH/denies as usual, but it was the way she acted when she got killed. Constant blaming of me not helping, even though I was on 100-200 hp and no mana, always running into engagements and telling me I didn't follow her plan, even though she never communicated it in any way.

Once I finally had enough of this, I told her (quite friendly for me. I'm not usually this calm when annoyed) "Maybe you should stay back a bit. Let the tankier ones go in first, maybe?"

You wanna know what she said?

"Omg stop telling me how to play the game! You can't even fight properly (I remember facepalming here) so shut up! Also, reported for communication abuse"

*

I guess what I'm saying is...I wish the people who deal with reports actually looked at the REASON for it, because most people who do it for stupid reasons don't do the optional "letter" to go with it.

Or at the very least send a message to the accused notifying them of the situation instead of the "By the way, you've been put in low prio. kthxbye" that we get now.

*

Rant over :/.

You know, I think Volvo should just remove it. There is absolutely no way they can make it better, because people are always going to abuse it for some reason. The only thing Volvo do with the reports is pass them, and the poor person gets put in low priority. Think about it, the only way this could be fixed, is if someone watched the said game replays before they passed the report vote. Of course this is impossible because I imagine that about 2 million of the players report others whenever possible, even when they're just reporting someone who is not doing well at the game (which isn't fair). For example, I got reported because "report Luna lost game because she won't attack creeps" AKA I wouldn't auto attack. Also, whenever creeps start coming after me, I head back to the tower and I don't just stay and fight, which is what he was doing.

All in all, it's a feature which does little to no good to the Doto 2 community, and I think it should be removed.

Counter rant, over.

I agree it's a long way off perfect, but it shouldn't be removed!

The fact is that there is probably a fairly substantial part of the player base that is in low priority, and quite frankly I'm glad the really horrible abusive feeders are as little involved in my games as possible.

Without the "threat" of low prio and communication bans, how much worse do you think the average pub would be?

The thing is - you guys say you've been reported...did anything actually happen from it? Probably not, because you're not usually reported and the system doesn't detect a pattern of systemic abuse. I'm sure I've been reported many times but have never been placed in low prio or comms ban - why? Same reason, I'm not usually a bad guy to play with.

If anything I'd say the problem with the reporting system is that it doesn't go far enough - 3 reports a week is simply not enough sometimes, especially if you play a fair number of games. I remember having 50+ reports saved up at one time as I only used them when appropriate.

Besides...we don't know what technical tricks Valve have up their sleeve here - it's quite possible they have bots to scan for abusive/rascist language from the logs of games where reports are made. Sure, people could be very unpleasant without them, but it would capture probably 80%. Again, it's pretty easy to check high deaths against feeder reports - sure it's not 100% accurate, but it would eliminate obviously false reports.

Obviously Valve won't confirm/deny the existance or workings of these mechanisms, as it would make them easier to circumvent.

I dont think being reported will put that player in low priority.
Ive been reported a couple of times for stupid reasons, like calling someones draft bad after we lose and i get all the blame, even though their abbadon bane viper trilane has god awefull synergy. But the only time that i was actually in low prio was because i had to leave a game.

To put it blunty, there's not much "wrong" with the system, it's just not weeding out the flaming idiots hard enough.

True, I got "reported" by a Skywrath Mage on a Saturday for ratting his Team to death with Sniper. He wasn't verbally abusive or anything, but he was crying over how he and his team couldn't deal with such an...pfff..."unfair" tactic. (remember that guy Bukan?). 8{3

In my nearly 1800 games, I have only ever been put into Low Priority from Abandons (mostly DCs...we all Rage Quit eventually 8{3 ).

Yup, it was so easy to report arseholes with the previous system. I don't know why they stopped letting them stack up, limiting it to no more than 3 new reports a week is fine (if you have less than 3), but some people actually use the report system properly. 8{(

This is quite likely, I tend to troll and annoy my opponents (and when needs be, teammates) without getting pout into Low Priority. Since I do it so much, I just know I must get Reported constantly for it (as well as the ridiculous tactics that should never work...MID OMNIKNIGHT RULES!!!). 8{3

---

Here's my way of DOTO...

If you've tried giving them helpful advice...
If you're getting flamed and blamed for everything they're doing wrong...
If you want to punish them...

Troll them without being abusive/swearing/etc. 8{3

Here's a few examples of how I do it (can't remember the exact words, but here's the gist of it):-

Russian#1740852:(cyrillic jibberish)
Xyrus:wut?
Russian#1740852:(cyrillic jibberish)
Xyrus:wut?
Russian#1740852:lick my butt
Xyrus:I already kicked it!
Xyrus's Team:>Well Played

Kunkka: Nic Stun Leshrac, why don't you learn to aim
Xyrus: because I learned from the same guy as you (his Torrents were laughable fyi)
Kunkka: WHAT? (insert some angry comment)

(Kunkka proceeds to hate on me, his team eventually wins the game)

Kunkka:Who sucks now?
Xyrus:You of course

My favourite method of trolling thouh, is what I like to call "The Xyrus Bait". You deliberately get low on HP to tempt a n00b to try and Kill you, then turn it around and Kill them, JUST as you're about to die (warning: this is not always smart if there's a Furion with brains around).

One time, I was playing Sniper (yes I love to troll with this Hero), so I turned around and Killed him.

Xyrus:nope

Later on he charged me again, only this time, I got his HP down t hte point where he would die in 1 Right-Click...rather than finish him off the boring way, I notice that my own HP is dropping, so I use Assassinate on him. It was so perfectly timed that I could hear him screaming "BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH" in my mind. In the end, no Bash came, and I finished him, JUST as he was about to land the finishing blow (probably a Bash) on me.

Xyrus:nope
Spirit Broken:**** OFF!!!

X{D

Well, they never will eliminate all the abusers and pad people in general no matter how they will improve report system. Firstly, there's always a way to, figuratively speaking, "avoid punishment while committing crime" - if they won't let me type "your mother is a fat *****" via different "blacklists" or censoring I can always type in something like "yoru mthoer s s fta bihct" - you can't ban all the variations unless you have the army of specially trained monkeys to check all the cases that ever appeared. You can use voice chat or auto phrase spamming if that comes to it. Secondly, Doto community is full of ignorant and whining *******s of different degree - I would say they are majority of them so there's no reason for Valve to punish their main playerbase.

Adding more variables into the system, as Sando suggested, would help the problem, like scanning chat logs of few games "suspect" participated in to determine if his language was that bad or reports were abused. Even more, a dossier on every moment that remembers every report and every ban of the player to punish those who constantly do harm to the communtiy harder.

However, that's whole lot of info - every report, who reported, for what reason, was that valid, how much was player banned to LP pool before, how long ago - add more of that and multiply it by, like, 3kk or so - I dunno how many active players there are in Doto currently. Not to mention measures of punishment, control numbers, possible "reputation" for player to give his reports more or less weight - this ofc shouldn't be public to prevent abuse but that's a lot of space and work.

The vast majority of "reports" are bluffs. People that would actually use a report for something other than its intended purpose (intentional feed/item stealing/overt racism) will burn through their 3 weekly reports on the first day.

I get told I'm reported probably 1 in 5 games. Only been to LP once in 2 years (due to abandons, not reports), and never been muted. About 90% of reports (only for aforementioned reasons) I use are followed with a "thanks, have an extra report" message the next day. Seems to work fine from where I'm standing.

Yeah, there's no way they can manually be checking individual reports, it's just too big a job. I'd guess there's some reasonably sophisticated stats/query checking going on the in the background that has a 95%+ accuracy for ban patterns and log checking.

And yeah, people off threaten reports, not sure how often they follow up on it. The 3 reports thing is annoying because you can easily use them in a single game with a particularly unpleasant bunch of characters - then it's frustrating later in the week when some idiot is overtly rascist and you can't do anything about it apart from mute them.

I'm pretty sure someone does end up in low prio when you get a "thanks you get an extra report" message - they've probably hit a critical mass (number/timeframe) and it's triggered in the system.

Tbh one of my personal things is to not accept aggressive abuse at all - if someone goes too far then I'll tell them they're muted and make a very minimal effort to help them (without hopefully screwing the whole team over).

For example, I was laning with a Drow Ranger (first clue) the other day in safe, he had some stupid name along the lines of "my team sucks" (second clue), after a failed gank attempt on their offlaner he started being very abusive in a certain accent that will be familiar to many DOTOers.

I just said "muted, bye", muted him, reported him and left him to lane 1v1 against Lich - must have been fun for him. No more zoning, pulling, no more farming priority, no more heals except to prevent a kill. Luckily the rest of the team had started to roam and we still won the game regardless (he was also a bad player, shockingly).

I hate not playing for the team as much as possible, but neither am I prepared to accept that kind of abuse, online or anywhere else. There has to be immediate, negative consequences for them. I maintain the vague hope those players might change their attitude afterwards.

Can't believe you guys abandon btw! I have 2 ever, both from technical problems!

>:{(

Haven't your mother taught you not to lie? Your dotabuff says you have 2x(!) more abandons u liar.

Anyway, I have more - 656/13=~1 abandon in 50 games. Only 1-2 were ragequits, rest because of internet/technical problems or that "hey, I have an hour and a half before I should attend something, how about a DOta 2 match, it won't last long - 40 minutes and I rek dem scru-w8, why both teams are full of hardcarries?" situation.

I never abandon games :p

I have a few abandons, but only because my internet sucks. I play till the end of the game always. Even if someone from my team disconnects.